Ah, summer! The season of water parks and carnivals and circuses.

It was the same in 1885, when John Robinson brought his “strictly moral” circus to Utah. Robinson’s was one of the premier circuses in America. At age 78 and near the end of his half-century as a circus performer and entrepreneur, Robinson was one of the wealthiest in the business. This was no shabby carnival whose advertisements were grander than its acts – this was the best there was, and Salt Lake City was on his route that year.

Anticipation of his arrival on the morning of July 17 was so great that one family stationed their little boy on the main road with instructions to run home and notify the rest of the family as soon as there was any sign of the circus. The little boy saw dust in the distance, and a speck of blue, and ran home as fast as his bare feet could carry him. “They’re coming! Hurry, you’ll miss them!” The entire family ran to the road in time to see a lone man walking along under the shade of a blue umbrella.

Nevertheless, the circus reached the Eighth Ward Square (site of the present City and County Building) by 10 o’clock. Nearby streets were thronged with citizens – not all of them children – jockeying for positions from which to watch the wagons and animals and bands.

A major part of the Robinson circus was its menagerie. There were five elephants, the largest named Chief. We recognize the cruelty of such treatment today, but in 1885 precautions taken to control the massive animal only made the audience thrill to the danger that he might break loose from his heavy iron chains: his tusks had been sawed off, and even his trunk was chained.

Chief’s companions included Baby, a 17-foot giraffe; two African lions and a Bengal tiger; hyenas, bears, and a yak; ostriches from Australia, a sloth from South America, a cow from Burma, and an alligator from Florida, with enough other animals to require fifty cages in all. Even parents and other adults agreed that the opportunity to see such animals at close range was worth the whole price of their children’s admission.

But the menagerie was not the main event – this was a three-ring circus under a big top. Once the tent was up and the acts underway inside, there were, according to report, “enough feats going on in each of [the rings] simultaneously to mystify and bewilder the clearest of heads.”

There was Miss Demotts, who performed daredevil stunts on the back of a horse. Mademoiselle Zola stood on a rod at the very top of the tent and simply fell head-first into a net positioned only four feet from the floor, accompanied by the screams of terrified ladies in the audience.

The trapeze artists were noteworthy that year, especially one young girl who flew at great distance across the tent to be caught by a man who hung from his knees from another trapeze. The tightrope walkers not only walked, but rode bicycles across the wire. One daring lady walked blindfolded across the wire, her feet encased in tin buckets.

Musicians sang, trained dogs jumped, a black man was projected from a Roman catapult, a fire-eater swallowed flame.

Not everything quite lived up to its billing, though. One act was announced as a man catching a ball fired from a cannon with his bare hands. But the cannoneer fired his powder too early and launched the ball too late. The audience may not have known exactly how the stunt was done, but they realized that some deception was involved.

Perhaps not surprisingly for a family-entertainment town, Salt Lakers flocked to the afternoon performances but left the night performances largely unattended. Still, Robinson’s circus was a hit, a welcome distraction from Utah’s political battles that summer. Some things never change.

This is a column I published with the Salt Lake Tribune that hasn’t made it to Keepa before.