The Great Elephant Stampede

MURRAY MONTGOMERY  - murray.montgomery@lavacacountytoday.com

If someone told me that there had been a cattle stampede in Gonzales, Texas, I would not doubt it one bit. But, elephants on the rampage? Yep, it is a fact; elephants did stampede there in 1949.

In the 1940s and early 1950s, Gonzales was the winter quarters for the Dailey Brothers Circus and the land they occupied was on the southeast side of town. The main entrance was located near the intersection of St. Vincent and Fair Streets.

Dailey Brothers Circus was not a small operation; it was billed as the third-largest circus in the United States. They were said to have had the largest elephant population in the country with a herd of 21. The circus had its own train and was on the road taking their show from Gonzales, in April, and not returning until November. 

Ben Davenport and his wife, Eva, owned the circus. Their young daughter, Norma, was one of the performers. Norma was billed as the youngest elephant trainer in the country; old programs from the show did not include her age but she appears to be about 15 in promotion photographs. She performed skits with elephants and horses. The circus had over 300 employees. 

According to statistics found in a 1947 program, the circus train traveled 12,442 miles and had shows in 25 states. “There were three deaths among the circus family and three weddings,” the program recorded. 

Old copies of The Gonzales Inquirer reveal that the Dailey Brothers Circus was very important to the local economy. It was considered such an asset, that when the circus decided to relocate their winter quarters to Florida, city officials became very concerned.

Representatives from the Chamber of Commerce flew to Florida and persuaded Ben Davenport to move his circus back to Gonzales. In one Inquirer article, the owners commented that they had not realized how much the Gonzales folks wanted them to stay and they were happy to move back. 

The circus employees seemed to get along okay with the local citizens and everything was going just fine until the day of "the great stampede."

The Gonzales Inquirer described the happenings of that fateful day in the following article which was published on April 7, 1949:

Things are quiet at the Dailey Brothers circus lot, today, but for two hours late Tuesday, bedlam would have been tame by comparison.

Eighteen bulls out of the circus herd of 21 elephants went on a rampage and stampeded out the winter quarters of the circus to roar across the southeast end of Gonzales for more than two hours before all were rounded up and corralled in their barn to quiet down.

With the consent of owner Ben C. Davenport, the herd had been moved to a ravine at the far end of the old fairgrounds to a heavily wooded section not far from the Guadalupe River.

The animals had been arranged to pass in a group before the camera, but they were sluggish and refused to be speeded. Davenport dispatched two cowboys, mounted on horses, to the rear of the herd and allowed them to shoot several rounds from .44 caliber pistols.

The combination of prancing horses and barking pistols frightened the herd and they started off without warning, trumpeting loudly and storming for distance in all directions.

The herd, all but one - Little Butch - was safe before sunset. It was not until many hours later that Little Butch was located in the woods, six miles out, and brought home in Davenport's Cadillac [Little Butch was a baby].

Two men were slightly hurt in the stampede, Rex Williams, 26, former Marine, a head elephant man with the circus, was bumped by a bull and sent flying probably 20 feet. He was cut and bruised.

For two miles, the elephants scattered, singly, in pairs and in threes, and it was more than two hours later, 4:30 p.m., before the last was rounded up by the frantically laboring circus hands.

They roared through fences knocking them down indiscriminately, and one bull tore off the porch of a small house. Letter boxes in the rural route areas also went down, among them the box of Louis H. School at State Park and one of his neighbors.

Across the Gonzales-Shiner Highway, the herd flew, some of them being captured later against the brick walls of the Gonzales Cotton Mill.

One pair suddenly smashed out of the brushland into the Shiner Road just as a tourist car, bearing Indiana plates and containing a middle-aged couple, drove along.

The goggle-eyed man at the wheel nearly cracked up when he saw the elephants charging in his direction. He drove into a ditch and the elephants passed by. Later, when he was able to regain the highway, the tourist sped into town screaming that the elephants were after him.