Two nineteenth-century American men, Phineas T. Barnum and James A. Bailey, largely defined the image of the circus, with acrobats, animals, band music, clowns, and trapeze artists, that is now deeply embedded in American popular culture. In 1881, they merged their separate circuses into Barnum & Bailey's Circus, which criss crossed the United States for decades, bringing the excitement of the Big Top to towns and cities from coast to coast. In 1919, the Barnum & Bailey Circus was merged with the Ringling Brothers Circus, which had purchased it in 1907 but ran it as a separate entity for twelve years. In the 1990s, the Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey Circus continued to thrill thousands of children and adults nationwide.

The first circuses to be seen in the United States were opened in 1793 in New York and Philadelphia by John Bill Ricketts, who specialized...