Curious Iowa: Did the circus inspire the creation of Cedar Rapids’ electric company?

CEDAR RAPIDS — Last month, a community member brought a few 1940s editions of The Gazette to our office. This included parts of the Aug. 11, 1946 Iowa Centennial Edition which looked back on Iowa history and local “firsts.” In it, one headline caught our eye: “First Electric Lights Brought Here by Circus.”

In the story, C.G. Greene, the first president of the Cedar Rapids Electric Light and Power Company, said that in early June 1882, Barnum and Bailey’s circus brought electric lights to Cedar Rapids.

The story was parroted by an ad from the company in a different section of the newspaper, which read, “And instead of the bareback rider with the jewel-studded belt, it was electricity that Mom and Dad talked about during the long buggy ride home. Interest grew and just two months later, on Aug. 31, 1882, the Cedar Rapids Electric Light and Power company was incorporated.”

It’s a great story, but there’s one problem: Barnum and Bailey’s 1882 circus route book didn’t record any shows in Iowa that year.

In this installment of Curious Iowa — a Gazette series that answers questions about our state, its people and our culture — we look at the advent of electric lights and how circuses brought the technology to the masses. We also dive into the early history of Iowa’s electric utilities and where local lore got things wrong.

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When did circuses start using electric lights?

Chris Berry, a circus historian and vice president of Circus Historical Society, said many people saw electric lighting for the first time in James E. Cooper and James A. Bailey’s shows. In 1879, Cooper and Bailey’s Great London Circus was the first show to use electric lights.

A few years later, Bailey would become partners with P.T. Barnum.

A 1988 article in Bandwagon circus magazine notes that circuses were early adopters of new technology.

“Owners of large circuses were always among the first to take advantage of technological progress,” writes Orin C. King. “Prior to Cooper and Bailey, only a very small number of Americans had ever seen anything brighter than a kerosene lamp or a softly glowing gas jet. The electric light in 1879 was a miracle to the masses and the show’s press department made the most of it.”

Prior to the advent of electric lights, efforts were made to light shows using oil lamps or rush lights, which are long candles fueled by grease. King, in Bandwagon, wrote “Sixteen hundred rushes weighting about one pound and saturated with six pounds of tallow would make a torch that would burn for about an hour, but in the process much heat was released and copious smoke produced.”

Council Bluffs was the location of one of the earliest known circus tent fires. The Mabie menagerie caught on fire during a windstorm on Aug. 2, 1864. There are conflicting reports of what exactly happened, but Berry said common lighting practices were hazardous. They ranged from lighting hundreds of candles to lighting chandelier systems with liquid oil or gasoline.

Electric lights, on the other hand, required the use of a steam engine or gas generator. The systems needed to power lights were built onto a wagon.

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King wrote that when the Great London Circus came to Topeka, Kansas in 1879, a description of steam engine power generation was published in every newspaper in town. A 35 horsepower engine powered all of the electricity.

“One light is equal to 3000 candle power, or nearly 200 gas lights, and is cheaper by seventy-five percent, than gas or oil. By varying the speed of the engine, the engineer can run from one to 17 lights and the lamps in any of the departments can be turned off at will and without interfering with the arrangement in the other departments.”

Where did Cedar Rapids lore get the story wrong?

It is likely that many Cedar Rapidians experienced electric lights for the first time at a circus. But it likely wasn’t in 1882 or through Barnum and Bailey’s circus.

To verify which circus could have brought electric lights to Cedar Rapids for the first time — and when — we spoke with historians at The History Center in Cedar Rapids, Illinois State University’s Milner Library and the Barnum Museum. We also searched through a circus route database, a circus route book archive and newspaper archives.

Tara Templeman, The History Center curator, suggested it was actually W. C. Coup’s circus, not Barnum and Bailey’s. Coup’s circus played Cedar Rapids May 29, 1882. While the timeline makes sense, it is unclear whether Coup’s circus had electric lights. Advertisements for the show highlighted “a monster menagerie,” but no mention of the novel attraction of electric lighting.

Maureen Brunsdale and Mark Schmitt from the Milner Library’s Special Collections suggested that the town lore could be a year off. S.H. Barrett and Co.’s New Great Pacific came to Cedar Rapids on July 8, 1881 and advertised one-half million yards of “great electric lighted tents.”

A further dive into Cooper and Bailey’s whereabouts in 1879 provided another theory. On Sept. 17, 1879, Cooper and Bailey’s show came to Cedar Rapids. That was the same year Great London Circus started using electric lights. An April 7 article from the Philadelphia Inquirer detailed that Cooper and Bailey’s show used electricity.

How was C. R. Electric Light & Power Co. established?

We know for a fact that Cedar Rapids’ proverbial light bulb moment came in 1882. On Aug. 31, 1882, the Cedar Rapids Times announced the incorporation of the Cedar Rapids Electric Light and Power Company.

That year marked an electric light company boom in Iowa. According to “A Century of Light: The Development of Iowa’s Electric Utilities,” by Alan Axelrod, Davenport Electric Light Company was established in May and Rock Island County Brush Electric Light Company was formed in July. By 1883, gas lamps and electric lights lit the streets of Cedar Rapids.

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Over the years, Cedar Rapids Electric Light and Power Company would grow and transform. In 1917, it built and operated the first automatic hydroelectric plant in the world. The hydroelectric plant’s capacity in 1917 was 20,000 kilowatts.

In 1932, the company changed its name to Iowa Electric Light & Power Company. In 1968, the company authorized the construction of the Duane Arnold nuclear plant at Palo. In 1994, the company changed its name again, to IES Utilities Inc. Finally, in the 1990s, Alliant Energy merged Cedar Rapids’ IES Utilites Inc. and Dubuque’s Interstate Power Co into Interstate Power & Light Company.

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Comments: bailey.cichon@thegazette.com