Route 70 brought the circus clowns to Hugo, Okla.

Beginning in the early 1940s, Hugo, Okla., became known as “Circus City USA.”

That’s because the place was teeming with circus people and their animals during the winter months. 

The traveling circuses during that era would camp in Hugo from December through March, because of a mild climate due to its location between the Kiamichi Mountains and the Red River of the South.

This small city in southern Oklahoma, which is conveniently situated on U.S. Route 70, a major east-west transcontinental highway, “offered a respite from harsher winters, making it ideal for circus troupes to rest, repair their gear and train for the next season,” wrote journalist James Pratt of Edmond, Okla.

The first to come in 1941 was Obert Miller, founder of the Kelly Miller Circus, which originated in Wilson, Kan. Word spread and soon Hugo became a magnet for more than 20 other traveling circuses.

“Hugo became a bustling off-season hub, with circus performers, animal trainers and roustabouts forming a tight-knit community,” Pratt said.

 

The Kelly Miller Circus began in 1937, literally as a small dog and pony show, in a tent that was hand-sewn by Obert Miller and his two sons, Dores Richard “D.R.” and Kelly.

Obert and his wife, Mary, worked the animal acts and handled the bookings. Kelly sold tickets and clowned. His wife, Dale, played the calliope. D.R. and his wife, Isla, did a wire act and trapeze.

The show steadily grew and expanded. By 1950, it had reached the stature of being one of the country’s major motorized circuses and was noted for carrying the largest menagerie of wild animals.

 

Although the “traveling circus business” is no longer booming, a few companies have survived, including Kelly Miller, Carson & Barnes, Culpepper & Merriweather and The Great Benjamins circuses. 

All have ties to Hugo. (The best source for historical circus information is the Frisco Depot Museum in Hugo.)

 

About 5,130 people live in Hugo today, and they cling to their “circus city” heritage. 

Many “Scenic 70” tourists come to reverently meander through the “Showmen’s Rest” section of the Mount Olive Cemetery in town.

 Writing for Oklahoma Living magazine, journalist Heide Brandes of Oklahoma City, said that D.R. and Isla Miller created Showmen’s Rest in 1960 to pay tribute to “all showmen under God’s big top, from animal trainers to jugglers to high wire artists.”

The graves of Obert and Mary Miller form the centerpiece. Their marker is etched with the main entrance of a circus, complete with ticket booth.

“In Showmen’s Rest, the final curtain has fallen, but the show, somehow, goes on,” Brandes said.

In 1993, D.R. and Isla Miller established the Endangered Ark Foundation in Hugo as a 250-acre preserve for retired circus elephants. 

The Miller family’s herd of 16 Asian elephants is one of the largest in the United States. The males and females reside in separate barns on the ranch.

 

“Visitors can get an up-close look at the majestic creatures, feed them and see how they’re pampered in retirement,” according to Karyn Olmos, executive director of Endangered Ark.

 

Recently, leaders of the Hugo Area Chamber of Commerce were instrumental in formulating a resolution to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of Route 70. 

They joined with other local chambers along the route in journeying to the state capital in Oklahoma City to witness an overwhelmingly favorable vote in the state senate on April 7, 2026. 

The bill was sponsored by Sen. David Bullard, whose district includes Hugo.

 

Perhaps it can be a model for other Route 70 states – North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.

 

Keep rolling on ‘Scenic 70’ to Glenwood, Ark. – it’s midway

Continuing to explore opportunities to promote travel and tourism along “Scenic 70” (old U.S. Route 70), we arrive in Glenwood, Ark., the midway point of the 100-year-old highway that connects the village of Atlantic in the Down East section of Carteret County to Globe, Ariz.

 

Glenwood, with a population of about 2,015, is in Pike County, about 30 miles west of Hot Springs in the southwestern quadrant of Arkansas.

The community is “nestled in a bend of the Caddo River with spectacular views of Arkansas’ Ouachita Mountains,” which rise to a maximum elevation of 2,753 feet. (Ouachita is pronounced as WAH-she-taw.)

 

This area developed a reputation for having one of the “best stands of timber in all of Arkansas,” and several lumber companies were formed to harvest the trees.

Local businessmen Curt Hays and Will Fagan platted the town site on both sides of the train depot. They chose the name “Glenwood” to honor the lush valley (combining “glen” and “wood”). The community was chartered in 1909.

 

Today, the Caddo River is a popular destination for recreational canoeing, kayaking, tubing, fishing and camping.

Pike County is the home of the world-famous Crater of Diamonds, a popular state park. It’s only a hop, skip and a jump off Route 70, heading west beyond Glenwood.

 

Grant Mobley, who is affiliated with the Natural Diamond Council in New York City, said: “The Crater of Diamonds was created by a 95-million-year-old volcanic crater. Unlike most diamond deposits, which form in kimberlite rock, the crater’s diamonds occur in lamproite, an equally ancient volcanic rock type. These diamonds formed more than a billion years ago deep within the Earth’s mantle.”

“Over millions of years, volcanic eruptions and erosion have brought many diamonds up to the surface, making them findable without industrial-scale mining,” Mobley said. “Visitors can simply walk in with a shovel, sifting screen or even just their hands, and if they find a diamond, it’s theirs to keep.”

“Decades of attempts to mine the site profitably failed,” he said, “and in 1972, the land was sold to the state and transformed into a public park.” 

The old mine shaft remains as an artifact.

 

Last summer, Micherre Fox, 31, of New York City came to the Crater of Diamonds to do some prospecting, in hopes of finding a diamond to seal her engagement to Trevor Ballou.

 

Mobley reported that Fox “struck pay dirt on her final day” of a three-week excursion, “uncovering a beautiful 2.30-carat colorless diamond that she has since turned into the ultimate personal treasure – her engagement ring.”

“On that last day, while scanning the dusty, sunlit field, something caught her eye. At first, she thought it was a dew-covered spider web,” Mobley said. “Upon closer inspection, it revealed itself as a gem glinting in the Arkansas sun.”

 

“The park’s gemologists confirmed her instincts: this Arkansas diamond was one of the largest diamonds recovered there in 2025.”

 

Moving on, Route 70 crosses from Arkansas into southern Oklahoma, and the highway passes through Broken Bow, Idabel and Fort Towson, Okla., before arriving in Hugo – a good place for a ceremonial pit stop.

Hugo was once the headquarters of the U.S. Route 70 Highway Association (in the 1950s)...and here's the outside cover of the map to prove it.

 

The city was formed in 1901 and designated as the county seat for Choctaw County, Okla., when the railroad came through. 

Hugo takes its name from French author Victor Hugo, whose famous works include “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame” (1831) and “Les Misérables” (1862).

 

(Hugo was the favorite writer of Lina Burford Darrough, wife of Arkansas and Choctaw Railroad surveyor William Harrison Darrough.)

Hugo is known as “Circus City USA” – another story for the “Scenic 70” journal.

Hear ye: U.S. Route 70 deserves some respect

Route 66 shouldn’t get to have all the fun.

“Scenic 70” deserves some love as well, according to Marvin Bullock, who is on a mission to see that U.S. Route 70 gets some recognition as it observes its 100-year anniversary in 2026.

 

Bullock’s “project” was first reported by Towndock.net, an online newsletter based in Oriental, N.C.

Bullock is a former resident of this Pamlico County community where the Neuse River becomes the Pamlico Sound. He retired in 2023 as president of the Sparta-White County Chamber of Commerce in Sparta, Tenn.

Sparta is a small city with about 4,975 residents located on Route 70 about midway between the major metropolitan areas of Knoxville and Nashville.

Traveling the full length of Route 70, about 2,385 miles from the village of Atlantic in Carteret County to Globe, Ariz., has been on Bullock’s bucket list for a long time. 

But he’s also taken an interest in serving as an ambassador to promote “the tourism, revitalization and preservation of Route 70” during the highway’s centennial year.

Bullock said he would like to see the “U.S. government recognize the uniqueness of one of the first paved highways” from the East Coast into the Great American Southwest.

U.S. Route 70 was once dubbed “The Hospitality Route to Disneyland” by the Bishop Printing & Litho Co. of Portales, N.M.

In the mid-1950s, the company published and distributed a stylized “coast-to-coast map postcard” that highlighted the highway as a “scenic, all-paved route from North Carolina to California.” Indeed, that was the case early on in the highway’s history.

Bishop Printing & Litho discontinued operation in the late 1980s. Portales is a city of about 11,660 people situated on Route 70, about 30 miles from Texico and the Texas border.

“By getting chambers of commerce along the route together, we can start lobbying to specifically advertise Route 70 as ‘Scenic 70,’” Bullock said. 

“Route 66 almost vanished more than once. Now, it’s a destination for people to go…just to travel on Route 66.”

“Route 70 is already well known amongst motorcycle and bicycle enthusiasts as the preferred transcontinental highway,” Bullock said.

Once travelers arrive in Sparta, Tenn., Bullock suggests they pull off the highway and see the sights.

Sparta claims to be “Bluegrass USA,” as the hometown of several bluegrass music legends. 

The most notable was Lester Raymond Flatt, a vocalist, guitarist and mandolinist. 

He was best known for his collaboration with banjo picker Earl Scruggs of Flint Hill in Cleveland County, N.C.

 

Performing as Flatt and Scruggs, the duo was joined by the Foggy Mountain Boys, resulting in one of the most successful bands in bluegrass music history, spanning approximately 20 years.

Bluegrass fiddler Benny Edward Martin also grew up in Sparta. He performed for a time with Flatt and Scruggs and is credited with inventing the eight-string fiddle. Nicknamed “the Big Tiger,” Martin typified “country stompin’” music, with his enthusiastic fiddling while dancing around on stage.

 

Other members of Sparta’s Bluegrass Hall of Fame are Bill Jones, John Henry Demps, Blake Williams and Josh Swift.

White County offers more caves, waterfalls and scenic overlooks per square mile than anywhere else in the United States. 

The chamber recommends that everyone journey about 12 miles northwest of Sparta to visit the spectacular Burgess Falls on the Falling Water River, named for the first settler in these parts, Tom Burgess. The Burgess family cut lumber and operated a grist mill above the falls.

Burgess Falls is most noted for its scenic value as the Falling Water River drops nearly 250 feet over three waterfalls. The last of these falls is the most spectacular and begins where the water plunges more than 130 feet into a gorge below. Protruding rocks halfway down break the curtain of water and spread a mist around the base of the falls.

 

With more than 100 miles of paddleable river water, including “world-class whitewater and serene flat water,” White County is also an “adventure tourism destination.”

 

“Scenic 70” just may catch on…adding a contemporary twist to the highway’s early marketing thrust. 

The U.S. Highway 70 Association began promoting the road in 1951 as “America’s Treasure Trail.”