Updating a previously published column:
One of the most interesting places to visit on US Route 70 is Hugo, Okla. The city was formed in 1901 and designated as the county seat for Choctaw County, 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.)
Beginning in the early 1940s, Hugo 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, conveniently situated on US Route 70, a major east-west transcontinental highway, “offered a respite from harsh 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.
About 5,130 people live in Hugo today, and they cling to their “circus city” heritage. Many US Route 70 tourists come to reverently meander through the “Showmen’s Rest” section of the town’s cemetery.
Writing for Oklahoma Living magazine, Heide Brandes 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.
The Hugo Area Chamber of Commerce was one of the first organizations to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of US Route 70, promoting a resolution that received an overwhelmingly favorable vote in the Oklahoma State Senate on April 7, 2026.
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