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28 June 1897
The fullest animal inventory Mishawaka ever hosted arrived by train and left the same way. The J. H. LaPearl Shows, a small railroad show out of Danville, Illinois, on the road from about 1893 to 1898, played Mishawaka on Monday, 28 June 1897 — Butler, Indiana, the Saturday before; a Sunday off, as the route card marks it; LaPorte and Plymouth in the days after. Behind its one-ring performance, the show's official route — preserved and printed a half-century later in the Circus Historical Society's Bandwagon — inventories the menagerie exactly: two elephants, one hippopotamus, one camel, and ten cross cages of animals.
For that one day, Mishawaka held the largest animals it has ever held. A menagerie that comes by rail is not a zoo, and this build does not print it as one; the stand is printed because it is the first documented animal exhibition on Mishawaka ground, documented at inventory strength, and because a test that prints only its verdict and none of its near-misses has not really shown its work.
Principal sources
- J. H. LaPearl Shows, official route, season of 1897, printed in Bandwagon, April–May 1952, pp. 10–11 (Circus Historical Society; route sent in by Charles E. Duble), read first-hand.