Wisconsin bar owner uncovers 134-year-old circus poster

By the time Berger was done excavating and researching, he had unearthed a 9-foot-high by 55-foot-long, multi-sheet, full-color paper lithograph circus poster advertising the Great Anglo-American Circus and Menagerie performing in Durand on Aug. 17, 1885, according to the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram. Schrake said the Durand poster is a relic from the golden age of circus, when the shows toured via railroad and advance teams would paper the towns on the schedule with posters and handbills promoting their acts. In another stroke of luck, though the building’s basement fills with water nearly every year, Berger noted that the only time Durand’s annual Chippewa River flooding would have been high enough for the above-ground artwork to be underwater was in 1884 — the year before the circus stopped in the city.

Source: www.chicagotribune.com