In 1847 two New York brothers, Edmund and Jeremiah Mabie, toured Wisconsin with their United States Olympic Circus, stopped in Delavan, and after hunting prairie chicken near Delavan Lake liked the area enough to purchase 400 acres and establish winter quarters for the circus there. Because this circus was the largest and most profitable in existence, circus performers and other show personnel flocked to Delavan. Between 1847 and 1894, twenty-six circuses winter quartered there, including Harry Buckley’s National Circus and Roman Hippodrome, W.C. Coup-Dan Castello’s Egyptian Caravan, and Holland and McMahon World’s Circus. Delavan reached its peak as a circus town during the 1870’s. In 1871 the idea for forming the P.T. Barnum Circus was developed in Delavan by W.C. Coup, who also was the first to put a large circus on rails and introduced the second and third ring to the performance. The colorful days of Delavan’s circus era ended with the E.G. Holland and Co. Railroad Shows, and about seventy members of the circus colony are buried in Spring Grove and St. Andrew’s cemeteries.