On the circus lot in Grayville alongside the Wabash River a plaque remembers the high water mark of the 1913 Wabash flood. The flood matters. Upriver in Indiana at the junction of the Wabash and the Eel rivers near Peru the elaborate winterquarters of Ben Wallace's Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus were nearly destroyed by the 1913 flood and barned filled with exotic animals were lost. Though Wallace rebuilt both the circus and the winterquarters within a few years he sold the show to what would one day be known as the American Circus Corporation.
Labels: Wabash Flood
