UC MagazineUniversity of CincinnatiUC Magazine

UC Magazine

On Campus Yesterday

Old Chief, the stuffed elephant

Old Chief moves onto campus, 1902

gravestone

Certainly you would have thought your eyes were deceiving you, but a full-size stuffed elephant was, indeed, transported on a horse-drawn cart outside the UC gymnasium in 1902. More surprising, the pachyderm lived on campus until 1998.

Old Chief, a five-ton Asian elephant, was imported to the U.S. in 1872 and performed with the Cincinnati-based Robinson Circus until his demise in 1890. His remains were stuffed and displayed at the Cincinnati Zoo for a decade or so until making the trip to UC.

The skin and stuffing somehow disappeared, but the skeleton stayed on campus until a grant allowed UC to transfer its collection of paleontological specimens  -- including the behemoth’s bones -- to the Cincinnati Museum Center.

While still alive, Old Chief developed quite a reputation as an unruly rogue. That notoriety was cemented when his handler, John King, was crushed between Chief and a train car while the elephant was being unloaded in Charlotte, N.C. King was buried in Charlotte’s Elmwood Cemetery beneath a 5-foot monument [right] donated by his fellow circus workers.