Excerpted from "Cagey Entertainer's Life Was a 3-Ring Circus" by Cecilia Rasmussen (9/29/02 LA Times) Few who navigate Washington Boulevard between Culver City and Los Angeles are aware that they are traversing the crossroads of a circus ghost town, the erstwhile Barnes City. When Al G. Barnes, born Alpheus George Barnes Stonehouse, established the winter home of his eponymous trained animal circus in 1919, west of what is now the San Diego Freeway between Washington and Culver boulevards, he ushered in future circus stars and eager fans. He managed to get the area incorporated, playing a little dirty politics in the process, and he left a parade of broken hearts. For nearly two decades, the Al G. Barnes Circus was an L.A. amusement mecca--beginning as early as 1911 at Venice Beach. The circus was the home of Tusko, an 8,000-pound elephant; Jack the Human Fly; and fat Sally and her 112-pound sweetheart.
Born on a farm in Ontario, Canada, in 1862, Barnes ran away from home to begin a checkered career as a street peddler, roadshow impresario and circus meister. In 1895, he arrived in Glenwood Springs, Colo., on a horse-drawn wagon, armed with a squeaky phonograph and a motion-picture projection machine. There, he met Dolly Barlow, who owned a small farm. She sold it five years later for $2,700, when she married Barnes. With the proceeds, they bought up several roadshows that eventually became the Al G. Barnes Circus. In 1911, at the invitation of the Pacific Electric Railway and Abbot Kinney's Venice of America Amusement Park, the Al G. Barnes Circus rolled into town. Barnes and his company would return for the winter after traveling around the West and Canada in the summer. He and hundreds of performers, trainers, workers and animals would arrive aboard his private train, each of its 40 cars named for a city in Southern California. As an army of well-muscled roustabouts pounded 15-pound sledgehammers onto tent stakes to pitch the big top, the circus paraded through Los Angeles--elephants, horses, acrobats, tigers--the whole glorious troupe. 
In 1919, as box office profits rolled in, Barnes bought 100 acres of the Washington Boulevard property and began putting up permanent buildings. Over time, Barnes' winter-home neighbors began to resent him and his entourage. The roar of his lions at feeding time could be heard all the way to Ocean Park Avenue, now Glencoe. And his sometimes disorderly employees did a swift business with local bootleggers. In February 1926, to protect his interests, Barnes and his cronies voted to incorporate the area as Barnes City. Some of the 692 registered voters lived in adjacent neighborhoods, others were bootleggers, and 254 were showmen who worked for Barnes. Virtually the entire electorate--603 of the 692--approved of the incorporation. "Barnes changed his entire circus schedule so his show would play at Barnes City on election day so the monkeys could vote without leaving their cages," a proponent of incorporation opined. Barnes handpicked the fledgling city's first board of trustees and made his brother the mayor. The officials were sworn in at City Hall--an empty building at Louise and Centinela avenues that was the focal point of continuing civic discord. Barnes City, population 2,500, existed only 14 months. Disgruntled residents forced a new election, throwing the Barnes faction out of office and unincorporating the town. Angry over the townsfolks' revolt, Barnes led his troupe out of town in 1927. When he returned to L.A. later that year, he moved the circus to Valley Boulevard in Baldwin Park. Five years later, Paramount Studios rented his new site to film "King of the Jungle," starring Buster Crabbe and Frances Dee. Barnes rarely found a deal he could refuse and, in 1929, he sold the old-time tent circus to the American Circus Corp. for $1 million, newspapers reported. The circus kept its name for almost another decade but was swallowed up soon after the purchase by Ringling Bros. It remained in Baldwin Park until 1938. Copyright
2002 Los Angeles Times
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