Where Circus Stars Find Rest

The Showmen’s Rest of Hugo, Oklahoma

Under a cloudless Oklahoma sky, I stand before a nine-foot-tall granite monument depicting a man in full ringmaster regalia, top hat tilted at a jaunty angle. The inscription reads simply: “The Tall Grass Showman,” John Strong, ringmaster extraordinaire. Below that, a sentence that seems to capture the essence of the circus life.

“The man with more friends than Santa Claus.”

I’m in the Showmen’s Rest section of Mount Olivet Cemetery in Hugo, a town that has earned its nickname “Circus City, USA” honestly. This peaceful corner of southeastern Oklahoma, served by Choctaw Electric Cooperative, serves as the final resting place for countless circus performers who spent their lives dazzling crowds across America.

The rectangular burial ground is marked by granite posts topped with small elephant statues. In the center stands a large headstone with a carving of a performing elephant reared up on two feet. Below it is etched: “A Tribute To All Showmen Under God’s Big Top.” The words hang in the air like the promise of cotton candy and the anticipation before a death-defying feat.

The elephant-topped pillars aren’t just decorative; they mark a sacred boundary, a designated space that makes this cemetery one of the rarest in the world.

“There are very few designated circus cemeteries in the world,” Donna Head, executive director of the Frisco Depot Museum, says.

Hugo sits at the crossroads of Interstates 30, 40 and 44, at the terminus of the Indian Nation Turnpike. Since the 1930s, it has served as winter headquarters for traveling circuses, a place where performers could rest between seasons. But why Hugo?

“We don’t have the winters like the northern people do,” Head said. “Because we’re between the Kiamichi Mountains and Red River, our winters are fairly mild. To get any kind of deep snow is a rarity.”

This climate advantage drew circus troupes looking for a place to wait out the winter months. At the Frisco Depot Museum, a list is maintained of all the circuses and the years they were in Hugo. Currently, Kelly-Miller and Carson and Barnes Circus call Hugo home during the off-season.

A home for unique legends

Walking among the graves, stories emerge from the stone. Obert Miller, founder of Kelly-Miller Circus, rests beneath a gravestone etched with the main entrance of a circus, complete with ticket booth. His son, D.R. Miller, who started Carson and Barnes, chose a simpler epitaph for his own marker: “Dun Rovin.”

D.R. Miller created Showmen’s Rest in 1960, and his daughter, Barbara, continues the tradition to this day.

Some memorials tell harrowing tales of the dangers that come with the circus life. John Carroll was an elephant trainer for 35 years, and his headstone portrays him standing atop an elephant’s head, a pose that seems impossible in its precariousness. The irony isn’t lost on me that Carroll was eventually crushed by one of the very animals he trained.

But circus performers aren’t the only showmen who found their final rest in Hugo. Just steps away lies the Bull Rider’s Reprieve section, where rodeo legends are memorialized.

Young champion Lane Frost always wanted to be buried next to his hero Freckles Brown, and when a bull killed him in 1989 at just 25 years old, his wish was granted.

“When Lane passed away up north in Cheyenne, Wyoming, his parents came to see about Freckles Brown. They noticed that there was no headstone in front of Freckles Brown’s headstone. So they checked on it,” she says. “They said, ‘We can call the people and we’ll pay whatever price there is. We would like for Lane to be buried right there.’”

Frost, the 1987 World Bull Riding Champion, is remembered with an urn bearing the touching inscription, “Lane Wasn’t Perfect, But He Knew Jesus.”

Among the more curious residents is William Edmond Ansley, one of more than 20 little people hired by Brown Shoe Co. to portray the comic strip character Buster Brown. Hugo native Max Bryan “Turk” Robinson, one of the first to portray “The Marlboro Man,” is also buried here.

The circus spirit lives on

The cemetery has become such a draw that it now attracts tour buses. But what makes Showmen’s Rest particularly special is its ongoing mission.

“The rule is that if you are a showman, it doesn’t
matter who you are, as long as you’re in the circus anywhere in the world, if you want to be buried in Showman’s Rest, you can,” Head said.

The vitality captured in granite at Mount Olivet Cemetery isn’t confined to memory. It breathes in the town of Hugo itself, where retired circus performers set up trapeze swings in their front yards and park circus trailers in their driveways. At the Endangered Ark Foundation, a herd of elephants (the second largest in the country) roams freely, resting up after a life on the road.

Not far from the cemetery, on Kirk Road, lies the winter home of the circuses. Though smaller now than in its heyday when 15 different shows wintered here, you can still see various circus wagons and tractor trailers out in the yards during summer, testaments to a tradition that refuses to die.

As Head points out, there’s much more to see in Hugo beyond Showmen’s Rest, including the Growler Pines Tiger Preserve, the historic Goodland Indian School (the oldest still functioning), century-old downtown buildings that predate Oklahoma statehood and Hugo Lake with its cabins. But there’s something particularly poignant about this corner of Mount Olivet Cemetery, where the circus never ends.

In Showmen’s Rest, the final curtain has fallen, but the show, somehow, goes on.