In 1882, Andrew and Clarence Cozad began touring a simple dog and pony show in Vaudeville, but their mother Lucy didn’t want them to drag the family name into show business, so they changed their last-name to “Norris.” The Norris Bros. Dog & Pony Show grew by leaps and bounds, with 40 dogs and 70 ponies, adding trained monkeys, ducks and goats as well.
The Norris’ approach was to encourage a playful training environment between the performing animals and people, and the show was one of pure joy. This so impressed the famed opera singer Dame Nellie Melba, that she required her own Irish settler Lionel to gain a “classical education” touring with the Norris Co. This lucrative tent show appeared in Santa Cruz at the Dolphin Baseball Park (now the main Boardwalk parking lot), and later at a lot near Ocean Street and Soquel Avenue, opposite the Vienna Beer Gardens.
But chronic ill-health forced Andrew to sell his interest in 1898 to H.S. Rowe, though Andrew toured with the show whenever his strength permitted. Now called the “Norris & Rowe Circus,” in 1900, the show doubled in size to 300 performing animals, including the world’s only trained zebra, and boa constrictor. While Fargo the Dwarf Elephant was hardly a challenge to Jumbo at only 36-inches tall and 1,000 pounds, Fargo was billed as the world’s smallest educated elephant. Fargo had a clown act, performed with a pet monkey named Coco, and a clown named Jargo, who was always being pranked by Fargo and Coco. That year the circus toured to the Paris International Exhibition of 1900, and brought back a world view of cultural acts.
The show grew from two boxcars in 1900, to four in 1901, then eight in 1902. But 1902 was known for its torrential rains in Santa Cruz. While the tent show went on, some animals got mired in muddy spots inside the tent. The ring-master quipped that “Gentlemen will now circulate amongst you, passing out life preservers!” The performing seal didn’t want to come in out of the rain. But the tiger hated the storm, and escaped into the Eastside, causing a sleepless night. It was finally captured at the Branciforte School grounds.
The circus first made Oakland their winter quarters, but lost some expensive animals due to inclement weather, so they leased San Jose’s Agricultural Park in 1901, which seemed to have similar problems. That year Andrew Norris attended his church’s Santa Cruz retreat at “Garfield Park Christian Campgrounds” (today’s Woodrow Street “Circles”), and bought a camp cabin.
Norris complained about his treatment in San Jose, and for several years received offers to move his winter quarters to Santa Cruz. At one point, Andrew used his old name to revive the “Cozad’s Dog & Pony Show” as a branch attraction, because it was simplest to mount, and brought in ready cash, with its comic dog, pony and monkey skits.
Winter quarters
But Rowe’s circus vision had simply outgrown the San Jose space, expanding into a two-ring circus that toured in 15 boxcars with 350 employees, making Norris & Rowe “the fourth largest circus in the world.” (March 9, 1905 Sentinel). Fred Swanton’s 1891 Vue de l’Eau trolley park, had left its Westside “Casino” and ball field in 1904 for new facilities at the Boardwalk. So a syndicate composed of F.A. Hihn, Duncan McPherson, Sam Leask, etc., purchased the 7 acre Woodrow & Pelton site for $5,000, to be recompensed by Norris & Rowe. In 1904, for $2,500 Clarence Norris built his elegant two-story home at Garfield Park called “Colonial Cottage,” where his mother and Andrew came to live. It was designed for entertaining.
With another $5,000, Norris & Rowe added improvements of a blacksmith shop, wagon shop, a studio for decorating parade wagons and canvas signs, and a “Ring Barn” to house the Circus School for training animals and performers, open to spectators. The Norris & Rowe Zoo housed over 300 animals, of which only a portion went on tour each year. Rowe’s favorite was his 2-year-old tigress “Babe,” with beautiful striping, who’d always been gentle and kittenish with him. The pre-existing “Casino” became a restaurant, office, and Curio Museum. Future plans were for a “Hippodrome” auditorium, to replace the tent arena.
Not all performers settled in Santa Cruz, but a “Circus Colony” of cottages grew up around Vue de l’Eau Park and the Tabernacle grounds. These included a 30-inch tall “Princess Nouma,” a “Leopard” family with spotted skin, and a magician. There were equestrians, acrobats, aerialists, trick cyclists, clowns, and musicians. The negro brass band swelled the ranks of the African Methodist-Episcopal Church, with the musicians marrying local girls. The “Congress of Nations” featured acts from abroad, with German, Cossack, Eskimo, Bedouin, Scottish, Turkish and Japanese performers. Multi-lingualism was needed even with animals trained in other languages. The Russian trick-cyclists and Japanese acrobats were a curiosity in 1904-05 seasons, during the Russo-Japanese War.
Touring season
Each season opened in March with tent shows in Santa Cruz and Watsonville, before leaving on tour. This included parades, with some wagons pulled by elephants, Shetland ponies, ostriches, llamas, geese, and for the first time zebras and camels. The circus, nick-named “Pride of the West,” promoted their Santa Cruz headquarter in coast to coast tours including Mexico, Canada, and parts of Europe. Performers weren’t paid until the circus returned to Santa Cruz, so they spent a lot of their money locally.
In 1906, the circus train climbed the snowy High Sierras, then stopped as they entered a tunnel. Upon investigation, it was found a cage had jolted off the flatcar, and been broken, leaving two bears dead. H.S. Rowe saw they were partly eaten, and realized his tigress Babe was loose. When Rowe saw Babe, his attempts to capture his old friend were thwarted when Babe captured him, pinning him to the ground. Growling, she began to bite his head, but didn’t like the snow, either on her feet or in her mouth. Realizing this, Rowe sunk his head deep into the snow, and with his fading breath cried “Shoot her!” A gunman shot Babe twice in the body, which only distracted her, and she ran off down the mountain pursued by his men. Rowe was thus saved, and Babe seemed none the worse for her bullets, recovering to raise a family in Santa Cruz with tiger Nero.
After the 1906 earthquake, they held a benefit show in several effected towns, as they did for a cyclone-hit Kansas town. The earthquake forced San Francisco’s “Chutes Amusement Park” to sell its extensive menagerie to Norris & Rowe, swelling the circus to 500 animals and 500 performers, traveling on 40 double-length train cars, with $4,500 daily expenses. Three months after the earthquake, Andrew Norris took ill in Fresno, and his wife rushed to his side. But then she suffered a hernia, was hospitalized, and died four days after leaving Santa Cruz. Andrew Norris had an operation, yet found little relief from his discomfort.
In December 1907, Andrew’s mother returned from touring the continent, to find Andrew depressed about circus expenses. She hoped to cheer him up, yet he was feeling overwhelmed, and went upstairs to bed. Then suddenly they heard a muffled sound, and rushed to his bedroom where they found him slumped to one side. But when his mother gently lifted him, she screamed in horror to realize he’d shot himself in the head.
Sadly, he was three months away from hearing the national press name Norris & Rowe one of America’s top three circuses of 1908, after Barnum & Bailey, and Ringling Bros. Norris & Rowe had a record-breaking run in San Francisco alone, logging 60 consecutive performances. Their clown “Mickey Feeley” amazed crowds with his double flip from a standing jump. But more amazing was when the Russian consulate in San Francisco discovered Mickey was in reality Prince Romanoff Pertowski, who fled Russia when his public criticism got him branded an enemy of Czar Nicholas.
On Feb. 27, 1908, Rowe witnessed a Westside demonstration flight by an experimental aircraft, the bat-winged, aluminum-framed “Meteor.” He hired Berkeley student-inventor Nicholas Carter to be the nation’s first circus aviator for the 1909 season. To everyone’s shock, the circus ended their most successful 1908 season being sued by creditors for insolvency. The circus had been a success as a small dog and pony show, but as it grew, its profit margin shrank. For 1909, they were preparing a 44 boxcar show with 600 people and an aeroplane. The circus was sold at public auction, hoping to save its next season, while the original Dog & Pony show regained its independence.
Leading Santa Cruzans tried to help them out, appearing in a benefit circus show sponsored by the Elks, exhibiting local talent. The grand finale of any Norris & Rowe Show was Roman chariot races, elephant races and camel races.
Cost cutting eliminated a number of the acts, no aeroplane, plus the hiring of cheap lowlifes damaged the circus’s well-groomed family reputation. They moved their winter quarters to Evansville, Indiana. But with money short and creditors following, they only toured Kentucky a couple months in 1910 before closing for good. Meanwhile, the original Westside winter quarters and zoo were cleared and turned into the Seacroft subdivision, forgetting that brief year when Santa Cruz was home to a circus in America’s top three.