Islander: The Circus Comes to Martha’s Vineyard

This story is fiction based on an event that really happened. In August of 1963 a real circus came to Martha’s Vineyard and gave two performances at Waban Park in the town of Oak Bluffs. A traveling circus usually traveled from town to town in a train or in trucks - this was the first circus ever to transport its animals, people, and supplies across a body of water to an island seven miles off the coast of Massachusetts. Ferry boats make daily trips to Martha’s Vineyard bringing supplies to the island as well as people and cars and trucks, an occasional pet dog, or two or three riding horses in a horse van. But never had they carried lions and tigers and elephants - or the entire makings of a circus. After about a year of planning, it took two of the ferry boats six round trips in the middle of the night to transport the entire circus to the Vineyard. It was an exciting affair and attracted about 6,000 people, some from Cape Cod and Nantucket. The Mills Brothers Circus gave two performances on August 5, 1963 in Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard, and came back to the Vineyard in 1965 to perform in Edgartown.