The Circus Elephants Take a Dip in Lake Washington
Thousands gathered at the lake to watch the performers of John Robinson's show take an afternoon bath.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The elephants of John Robinson's show had a swim in Lake Washington yesterday afternoon to the delight of thousands of spectators. There were three of them: Mary, Babe, and Cincinnati. Mary, at 100 years old, is the oldest elephant in captivity. Due to her infirmities, she could not walk the hills to the lake, so she was loaded onto an open freight cable car at Sixth Avenue and transported there. When she was unloaded, her companions, Babe and 'Cin,' joined her in the water. The elephants rolled about, splashed, and sprayed their backs with water, seemingly in high glee. While the two younger elephants swam for half an hour, Mary was eventually kept out of the second bath due to her health.
“They rolled about and splashed and sprayed their backs with water from their trunks, seemingly in high glee.”
This scene captures a bygone era of traveling circuses, where the arrival of a show was a major civic event. The use of cable cars to transport an elephant highlights the integrated, if sometimes chaotic, nature of 1890s urban infrastructure in Seattle.
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