Ortonville was once a community with a cafe and grocery store, gasoline station, elevator, post office, stockyard, and two telephone companies. It was named for the Orton family, who moved to the area in 1866. Hiram Orton, founder of the Orton Circus, chose Ortonville as the circus's winter quarters. For 66 years and across four generations of Ortons, the circus entertained people throughout the central United States, traveling by horse-drawn wagon from one community to the next across the upper Midwest. According to one source, it was the largest wagon circus in the world. Its animals and attractions entertained thousands of people in the Dakotas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Montana, and Iowa. The circus wintered its animals at Ortonville because the fertile soil produced good crops and grain for them. The animals included monkeys, horses, elephants, lions, dogs, camels, tigers, and leopards, while additional entertainment featured a band, trapeze artists, tight wire and slack wire walkers, swinging ladder and rolling globe performers, contortionists, acrobats, and clowns. Side show attractions included alligators, an ostrich, baboon, boa constrictor, and more. After the death of Criley Orton and the stock market crash that led to the Great Depression, the heyday of the Orton Circus ended in 1929.