The Circus World Museum in Baraboo WisconsinBennett Watt: Circus World Museum is one of Americas greatest living history spectaculars captured on 43 acres of historic landmark. The original home of Ringling Brothers circus is here in Baraboo just a few miles from the Dells.Dave Saloutos: This is Circus World Museum, Americas circus museum, it was the original home of the Ringling Brothers circus. This is where they began and were they grew to become the worlds greatest show. And when they started it was real small, they travel on nine backward farm wagons the first year and all of the brothers did acts, played musical instruments in the bands, set up toward dawn, drove to the next city, a real hands on experience. There were five brothers watching the business very closely and they grew rather rapidly and became the number one circus in America. Theyre really arent very many places that preserves circus history. It was a very important cultural thing in America; circus really brought the culture and innovations, exotic animals and then incredible sites to people throughout America in a time before America was mobile. It brought civilization to people, they usually solve their first electric light heard the first recorded sound, saw the first car, airplane, motion picture all on circus. The circus most definitely is part of the American dream. When they went to the circus they could forget about all their mundane worries and the things that were affecting their lives, transported to a magical place that was there and there own town for one day and one day only. Human performers do unbelievable feats, exotic animals from the four corner of the earth the latest inventions and innovations and it was right there in their home town.Male: Lets go back to talk about that tramp ones more; you know that elephants have over 40,000 muscles in their trunk alone. They use it for everything its very amazing, they breath through it, they eat with it, they drink with it, youve already seen that quick things up and put it in anther and scratch their stomachs, it was fixed and they cant reach them down there but right now the girls are going to show you how they breath through their trunks. They could play a lot because the fans are, blow it, blow it, there you go what a good girl. Take a bow.Dave Saloutos: We thought an elephant encounter where they explained how elephants are educated and cared for on the circus and a number of smaller programs like the novelty and scenes which I just did here in circus world. Kids with circus which is interactive and then a number of tours another of historical demonstrations some with rare equipment, some showing the old buildings that were used by the Ringling Brothers Circus and much, much more. Our main show is a Chinese acrobatic circus, Chinese have joined with American shows going back to the 1840s were particularly popular around 1890s and 1900s and in their country its a tradition like it goes back 2,000 years, so its quite significant.Male: For a good palm make up you have to learn how to baby powder it or set your makeup. I put my makeup on once a day up until well from the beginning of the season which was two weeks ago to Labor Day which is about three more months. Ill be doing it every single day. Its really kind of interesting being a Ringling Count, this is the area where its started where the five brothers started their circuits way, way back in the 1800 and just walking on this ground is I want to say Holy Ground but thats not even it. It just we get there and you come into this barns and you can just peel your history basically or part of Americana, its the United States history right here.Bennett Watt: The circus started traveling over land just regular farm wagons but as people started turning out to see the surface coming to town they realized they had a good advertising tool. So they began painting them bright colors then they started adding decoration in the bench where they grew into be wood carved masterpieces. They really, really reach their zenith in about 1903 but continued on up into the 1920s and it was the greatest advertising tool of circus had, created the lot of excitement. As streets got paved and times moved on they started falling by the way side and these wagons is beautiful masterpieces went into barns, many of them were burned in World War II to save the metal components for scrap metal and so not that many of them has survived at the present day. We feel blessed to have had the foresights to be able to start collecting these things before they would recognize as masterpieces and now weve got 2/3 of them.Dave Saloutos: We have a library research center thats got how to be able to picture the circus wagon that ever existed, so we go through our library and we look at through pictures of the era the wagon we want to restore it and thats how we wish to store it back to. Sometimes the wagon is bringing to just pieces. This piece we have parts so we can go pick all of these pieces and sign up with the gold leaf or whatever but its great feeling them to be able storing back in this definition. My greatest thrill is explaining things to both the young people and to older folks and seeing the faces laid up and they start to comprehend what the circus actually meant to people, 100 and 150 years ago and how on clothing gets less peoples lives and then they understand why were passing at about preserving it.