The Circus Blog

Posted By thecircusblog on April 18, 2013

We only worked Shorty one show in the evening  so he got a little fat but he got his work out during the mornings. I had 7 other acts in the circus.We did two acts every hour on the hour ….each performance lasted about 20 minutes. I also had four other stages in the park that had entertainment going on at the same time. Lake Front stage, The Vaudeville stage, Old Town Saloon stage and The Glen Campbell stage, which  later became Compton Terrace. Jess Nicks…. Stevie Nick’s father, took over this area from Compton and continued to produce rock concerts.We had to separate the concert area from the amusement park so we fenced the front portion of the park off. These concerts were paid events and needed to be controlled. Bill and Dorothy Capell still owned the park and they worked hard to present different venues including the rock music produced by Jess Nicks.  Legend City is truly a legend now. In it’s place on the very ground where people had fun are business buildings. Traveling along the 202 Fwy west looking over toward Papago Park hills you can see a large triangle type building. This area was the 4 acre island that was in the center of Legend City. The island had an old frontier fort and was surrounded by water. I understand that years ago in the 1960’s they shot a couple of movies there. We really could not do too much with this area. Then I got the idea to make a free petting zoo. This became very popular with the kids. The water kept the animals within the zoo area. There was only one way in and out which was a bridge to the island with a gate. It worked well until someone left the gate open and we had over 70 large farm type  animals running though the park. The rabbits, ducks, chickens and other small varmints are not in the count.

Categories: Legend City
Tags: Compton Terrace, Fleetwood Mack, Hard Rock, Stevie Nicks