“We Have Seen It” was the caption for the Dec. 2, 1872, Chattanooga Daily Herald article on the Greatest Show on Earth. P.T. Barnum, the “Prince of Humbugs,” brought entertainment and education to town in his Great Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan, Hippodrome and Zoological Garden.
Barnum first showcased his menageries and oddities in his American Museum in lower Manhattan, New York City. Its attractions made it a combination zoo, museum, lecture hall, wax museum, theater and freak show and included a flea circus, a rifle range, glass blowers, an oyster bar, pretty-baby contests, a 25-inch Tom Thumb, and Shakespearean drama.
After the museum burned in 1865, William Cameron Coup, a Wisconsin businessman, supported him in touring the country with “P.T. Barnum’s Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan, & Hippodrome.” His circus train took its acts and animals to those who until then could only read about such things.
Barnum brought his circus to Chattanooga on Nov. 30, 1872, just a few years after the end of the Civil War. His ad began on Nov. 19 and ran until the show date, taking up a third of the Daily Herald’s front page. Barnum promised more than 100,000 living and representative curiosities. To see the show cost an adult $1 and a child 50 cents – or nothing if you bought his autobiography, “The Life of P. T. Barnum,” for $2.25. Regardless of how you paid, the Herald reported a show at which “you got the full value of your money.”
If you couldn’t pay the price of admission or buy the book, you could enjoy the unloading and loading of the railroad cars. Barnum was one of the first circus owners to transport his circus by rail and was probably one of the first to own his own train. Once unloaded, the animals and circus wagons joined in a parade, whetting the appetite of the town folk for the coming show.