[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Often referred to as Little Dixie, the southeastern corner of Oklahoma is home to more than just customs stemming from Native American influences in the 1800s and southerners who later migrated to the area in the 1900s. Outside of similarities in agriculture, architecture, demographics, and politics resembling the American South, in one town you can add another unique feature to the list: the circus. Hugo, Oklahoma, the county seat of Choctaw County, has served as the winter home for traditional tent shows since the 1940s. The Miller family's Al G. Kelly and Miller Brothers was the first to call Hugo, Oklahoma, home, thanks to the support of local businessman and circus fan Vernon Pratt. While Pratt offered the Millers free water for their animals, it proved to be a good move for circus owner Obert Miller and his two sons, Kelly and D. R., as the family was looking for a warmer climate over the winter months. Soon after the Millers established Hugo as their winter quarters, other shows followed. In addition to the town's temperate climate, Hugo also has easy access to state highways, which run north and south as well as east and west, creating more options when planning circus routes. The Hugo-based tent shows often followed the agricultural harvest and brought entertainment to rural communities throughout the South. Through the years, approximately twenty circuses established winter quarters in Hugo, with notable owners such as Herb Walters, the Miller family, and Jack Moore all setting up shop in the Little Dixie town known as Circus City, U.S.A. As of 2014, only three traditional tent circuses continue to call Hugo home: Carson and Barnes, Kelly Miller, and Culpepper & Merriweather. Despite the boom and later decline of circuses in the area, Hugo continues to hold strong to its circus heritage. One distinct reminder of this heritage can be found while exploring the tombstones at the Mount Olivet Cemetery. In the 1960s, a section of the cemetery was established as Showmen's Rest, serving as the final resting place for circus entertainers, employees, and show owners from not only Oklahoma but all parts of the country. Wandering through row after row of unique markers and engravings sparked an interest in the people laid to rest there. Unanswered questions led to the development of an oral history project focused on preserving the culture of those with circus ties in the Little Dixie town of Hugo, Oklahoma. NOTE Photos and interview excerpts were recorded as part of The Big Top Show Goes On: An Oral History of Occupations Inside and Outside the Canvas Tent. Made possible by a 2011 Archie Green Fellowship from the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, oral history transcripts, recordings, and images from this project are available at the Oklahoma State University Library and the Library of Congress American Folklife Center in Washington, D.C. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] We had a gentleman that worked for us, and he was just a drifter that came on as a teenager and ended up spending his whole life with us. His name was John Carroll, and he worked with the animals. And especially back in the old days, some of the guys that would come along, they were drifters and didn't really have family connections, and so the circus kind of ended up being their family and their home, and they spent their lives here. So John Carroll was one of those characters. He had lost his eye in an accident, and he received like an insurance settlement. I think it was seventeen thousand dollars or something, and he didn't have a family. About five or six years later, he passed away. And unbeknownst to my father, he had left this insurance settlement to my father. My dad didn't know what to do with it, and about that same time my uncle passed away, and that was in 1960. So he got the idea of making this place where circus people would be buried, because a lot of times circus people, like I say, don't have roots, and they would be buried in Timbuktu. …
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