Circus in Town & Elephants
Resident Pachyderms
Many people wouldn’t believe it, but at this location, between 1979 and 1982, Live Oak had resident pachyderms that lived in a subdivision known as the Green Meadow trailer park. Mac McDonald built the trailer park, complete with concrete pads and electrical connections, with an entrance off of IH 35.
During this time, there would be an entire circus that would winter here, camping out in the trailer park area, complete with giraffes and camels and many other elephants. The circus rested here for a couple weeks before moving on to the next performance.
The last remnants of the trailer park and the circus was a “Circus Star”, that was at this location. Consisting of a concrete circular area with anchor bolts (one of which is at the base of this sign) where the elephants were kept and trained, still existed until excavation started for the Live Oak Town Center.
Historical Information received from Becky Steward
Ms. Becky Stewart
McDonald’s Trailer Park. They called him Mac and Peggy was his wife’s name. He trained elephants for a bunch of different circuses. He didn’t have that many when they were there. He had a barn off of the first entrance and it was as large as the current fire department where they park their trucks.
The Stewarts lived in the park from 1969 to 1971. The park was mostly military people. She said that it really wasn’t a typical trailer park because everything was really nice when they lived there. There was also a laundry mat on the property.
Mac would bring the elephants down for the kids to ride. Mac was an avid gun collector and had elephant guns.
