Tracking the traveling circus: Student maps data to visualize American history

For his doctoral thesis, Architecture student Devin Jernigan mapped the routes of the traveling circuses that moved across the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries. With help from Yale Library experts, he gathered research materials and digitized data to tell the story in an accessible and visually dramatic way.

Jernigan’s research explores how circuses used space—how they laid out their structures in each town and how they traveled. His project reveals patterns in U.S. social history, including changes in population, farming, transportation, and the territories of large and small circus companies.

Turning research into data

Jernigan worked with library staff who support data-intensive research, increasingly important to in-depth scholarship. They helped him locate books, articles, and datasets. With geospatial resources and support, he learned how to derive and analyze data from ledgers and to digitize historical maps to visually represent that data.

“Researchers need different support at different points in the process,” said Lauren Di Monte, associate university librarian for research and learning, “from deep subject knowledge to expertise in research data management, geospatial analysis, computational methods, digital humanities, open access publishing and more. We are working to make the process as seamless as possible for students and for faculty.”

Gathering history

Jernigan has ties to the American circus through his grandfather, who played in the band at the Minneapolis Zuhrah Shrine Circus for 40 years. Jernigan began the project in his second year of doctoral study, while taking Professor Bill Rankin’s course “Critical Data Visualization” in the History of Science/History of Medicine Department.

Through the library, he accessed valuable resources, including the National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS), which provides free online access to census and survey microdata. Through interlibrary loan, he acquired hard-to-find books, like “The Life Story of the Ringling Brothers” by Al Ringling and “Annals of the American Circus” by Stuart Thayer. James Kessenides, Kaplanoff Librarian for American History, directed him to materials about rural American life during the era, which helped Jernigan map the remote regions where circuses performed.

Working with souvenir route books—often given or sold to circus members as a commemoration of the season—Jernigan tracked dates and location stops to study the paths of popular circuses. He also relied on organization records, collected and maintained by circus fans and historians, and on ledgers from the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida. Yale’s John F. Enders Research Grant supported his work with the financial ledgers of the Gollmar Brothers Circus—the focus of his study—in the Circus World Museum archive in Baraboo, Wisconsin.

Mapping the routes

To translate his research, Jernigan consulted two library staff members: Kayla Shipp, program manager of Graduate and Professional Student Success, and Miriam Olivares, head of Geospatial Support Services.

Shipp introduced him to the library’s many digital humanities resources. Olivares introduced him to ArcGIS Pro, the mapping software that Yale Library licenses for Yale faculty, students, and staff. Olivares also encouraged Jernigan to apply for the Yale GIS Accelerator, a five-day training program for researchers who want to include geospatial analysis in their research projects.

“Miriam Olivares has been invaluable and supportive throughout this work,” Jernigan said. “She showed me how to collect and digitize data for mapping, taught me the basics of ArcGIS Pro, and provided ongoing support during the research process.”

During the Yale GIS Accelerator, Jernigan mapped stops within the known territory of each of several traveling circuses. He mapped their routes along rail lines and country roads—which enabled him to show overlapping territories and growth over time. The Yale GIS Accelerator series, introduced in 2021, is a collaborative offering from Yale Library and the Yale Center for Geospatial Solutions.

Circus travel

One of Jernigan’s color-coded maps shows at least 30 “horse-drawn wagon” circuses traveling through New England and the Midwest in 1863. Another map reveals that by 1879 major circuses were taking advantage of the rapidly expanding railroad network, allowing them to travel farther and faster throughout a season.

The first major circus to move by rail for an entire season—with a customized set of railroad cars and a planned itinerary—was P. T. Barnum’s Great Traveling Exposition and World’s Fair in 1872. The Ringling Bros. World’s Greatest Shows, which started as a small wagon circus in 1884, became a railroad circus in 1890. By 1900, Ringling Bros. was a national operation, traveling across the entire United States.

In contrast, the regional Gollmar Brothers Circus (known as the “Great United Shows and Congress of Trained Animals”) was still an overland show. It traveled throughout major cities in the Midwest: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin.

By 1911 the Gollmar Brothers circus was traveling by train, able to cover more ground and compete with the larger companies until it closed in 1916. In 1929, just months before the stock market crash, the Ringling organization acquired its largest competitor and added five shows, leaving small, independent shows as their only competition.

In early 2025, Jernigan presented his work at the American Historical Association’s annual meeting in New York City. His maps will form a chapter in his dissertation. “Spectacular Nomadism: The Modernization of Space in the American Traveling Circus” will track the transition of circuses from wagon to rail and connecting their routes to shifts in population, farming, and social change.

The next Yale GIS Accelerator will run from Jan. 5–9. Applications are due by Monday, Nov. 17.

Photos: Devin Jernigan and Miriam Olivares working in the Digital Humanities Lab in Sterling Memorial Library, photo by Monica Reed; Gollmar Brothers show in Boscobel, Wisconsin, July 19, 1913; Gollmar Brothers show, possibly in Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin, May 19, 1916. Historical photos are from the Fred D. Pfening III Collection.

Maps: All maps are from the David Rumsey Map Collection, David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford Libraries. All images use railroad data from Jeremy Atack, “Historical Geographic Information Systems (GIS) database of U.S. Railroads for 1826–1911.”

—Deborah Cannarella