7. Barnum and Bailey’s returned to the United States in 1902
By the time Barnum and Bailey’s European sojourn ended and they returned to the United States in 1902, Ringling Brothers had established itself as the premier circus in the Eastern United States, touring the northern states in the warm months and wintering at established quarters first in Connecticut and later in Florida. With the consummate showman, P. T. Barnum, dead and the competition for entertainment dollars tightening, Barnum and Bailey’s decided to move their show west of the Mississippi River. It should be remembered that at the time, Arizona and New Mexico were not yet states, the west was just barely settled, and territorial disputes and banditry were rife along the border with Mexico.
As with their eastern competition, Barnum and Bailey’s traveled the west by train, using cars which the circus owned, and set up their shows near railyards, which in the west were often surrounded by stockyards. Their audiences were typically more raucous and hard to awe than those of the comparatively tame Eastern states. In 1906, James Anthony Bailey died. Besides working as the circus owner and director, Bailey frequently performed as a ringmaster, and he had been instrumental in obtaining many of the performers who appeared in the shows. Following his death his widow, who had no interest in continuing the peripatetic life of a circus performer, sold Barnum and Bailey’s to Ringling Brothers.