So-called giant animals are a familiar sideshow at the Oregon State Fair. You find them on the concourse, far from the barns, in brightly painted lean-tos shielded from sight.

Signs advertise their height, weight, length, and girth, often claiming they’re the world’s largest among their breeds, and fairgoers pony up a buck for a look-see.

Before Big Al the alligator, Harley the hog and Hercules the horse there was Tusko the elephant.

Chained to a flatbed trailer, in plain sight for all to see, Tusko was on exhibit during the 1931 state fair. The former circus star was billed as the largest elephant in captivity, measuring more than 12 feet tall and weighing 10 tons.

Much like a football player’s size is exaggerated on the roster, Tusko more realistically probably weighed around 14,000 pounds or seven tons.

This isn't the Tusko who lived at the Oregon Zoo for 10 years until his death in 2015. It's not even the Tusko who was accidentally killed during an LSD experiment at the Oklahoma City Zoo in 1962.

This Tusko was orphaned 86 years ago at the fairgrounds in Salem. At the end of the nine-day fair, his owner left for Portland and claimed he would be back to retrieve the elephant, but was never seen again.

It was just another heartbreaking chapter in Tusko's life, one riddled with abuse and abandonment. Hustled from one hapless promoter to another, he once was dubbed “The Great Unwanted.”

“He probably ought to be more famous than he is,” said Edward Davis, assistant professor of earth sciences and curator of fossil collections at the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History, where the elephant’s bones were donated decades ago and are used to this day for education and research.

Tusko is famous, or infamous, depending on what you read.

“There is a lot in print about him," said Fred Dahlinger Jr. with the Circus Historical Society. "But as with so much elephant lore, it's hearsay, legend and undocumented statements.”

With that caveat, here's what I dug up about the legend of Tusko:

A star is born

Tusko was captured at age 6 in Siam, what is now Thailand. It is said that the young bull was 5 feet tall when he was unloaded from a sailing ship at New York Harbor in 1898.

His original name was Ned, and he performed for several circuses early in the 1900s, including the Great Syndicate Shows, the Great Eastern Shows, and the M.L. Clark & Sons Combined Shows.

He was sold in 1921 to the Al G. Barnes Circus, and his name was changed to Tusko, presumably because of his 7-foot-long tusks. By the time he arrived in Salem, they had been shaved down to nubbins.

Tusko was the main attraction for the Barnes show, which eventually was purchased by John Ringling. Ringling sold what was then described as a temperamental elephant to Al Painter, a promoter for Lotus Isle, an amusement park in Portland.

The park had a neon Eiffel Tower sign at the entrance and was known for the Peacock Room and its mascot, Tusko the Magnificent.

Painter eventually sold Tusko to T. H. Eslick, one of the developers of Lotus Isle. Eslick used Tusko for a sideshow tour, with their final stop at the 1931 Oregon State Fair.

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Settling in Salem

Tusko was a hard-to-miss attraction during the nine-day fair, which ended Oct. 4. A photo from the Salem Public Library Historic Photograph Collections shows him heavily chained to a wooden platform with four children in front of a group of fairgoers gawking at him.

Eslick left for Portland with the understanding that he would return later in the week to retrieve his elephant, but he never did.

The Oregon Statesman surmised it was because he was broke and could no longer afford to care for Tusko. The Statesman and the Capital Journal published several articles about the state’s new ward and Salem’s new resident.

Some folks had sympathy for Tusko, others not so much. The state fair board had legitimate concerns about how much it would cost to feed the giant orphan. Tusko ate more than 300 pounds of hay a day, and a keeper would have to be paid to watch over him.

A public discussion about whether the state could euthanize the elephant played out on the front pages of the papers.

One citizen suggested the meat be canned for the poor. A chemical company in Eugene offered to take Tusko off the state’s hands if it could slaughter the elephant, reclaim the salvage, and use his name to advertise a new brand of fertilizer.

Others were more preoccupied with the potential danger of his presence, especially after some of Tusko’s past was dredged up. His appetite was equaled only by his desire to escape.

On the rampage

Long before he came to Salem, Tusko was described as not just the world's largest elephant but the orneriest. He had a reputation as a bad boy.

His most infamous escape was on May 15, 1922, when the Al G. Barnes Circus was in Sedro-Woolley, Washington. About an hour before showtime, he got loose and went on a tear through town.

He wrecked automobiles, uprooted trees, mowed down telephone poles, and ripped out fences. When he reached the outskirts of town, he razed an orchard. No one was hurt, but he caused $20,000 in damages.

Some accounts say Tusko was drunk at the time, having devoured a moonshiner's mash.

While at Lotus Isle, he broke from his chains after being spooked by a low-flying stunt plane and destroyed several pavilions on the property. The buildings were never rebuilt and that was the beginning of the end for the Portland amusement park.

Among his other capers, this one orchestrated by then owner M.L. Clark, was a bout in the bull ring in Mexico. Clark struck a deal to match Tusko, then known as Ned, against fighting bulls. Reports vary on just how many he defeated that day, from one to six.

Not long after leaving Salem, his home for two months, he escaped in Portland but didn’t get far. A rifle squad was at the ready, but his life was spared when trainers were able to use a noose hidden by hay to nab him.

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Sold to the highest bidder

The state fair board passed off the responsibility of dealing with the elephant in the room to the Marion County sheriff.

No one knew what to do with Tusko, let alone afford to keep him, not the state, county or city. When it became obvious that his owner had bailed, it was decided that Tusko would be sold at auction.

He was moved to the goat shed on the fairgrounds and secured with additional tie-downs. Although it isn’t clear how much was known about Tusko’s past, the sheriff ordered four “electric-welded, triple-strength” chains.

The auction was scheduled for Nov. 3. More than 1,500 people showed up, but it was delayed when a feeble bid of $12 was all the sheriff could muster.

Two days later, the auction was on again. Fewer people showed up this time, and the crowd was kept outside the shed.

Tusko was described in newspapers as being restless, weaving back and forth on his tightly drawn chains. He was "snubbed down," as he had been since he arrived in town, with a heavy steel guard placed over the top of his trunk and tusks.

Harry Plant, a local fight promoter and custodian of the armory, won the auction with a $200 bid. Immediately after the sale, he ordered the doors closed and started charging a dime for admission.

He hired a couple of elephant trainers, secured backers in Salem who were ready to furnish provisions for the winter rather than see Tusko “murdered,” and announced he would exhibit the big guy locally.

Most of the money raised at the auction went to the sheriff to cover the cost of hay. Some went to the transfer and storage company that was owed for delivering Tusko to the fair.

Farewell, Salem

Within a short time, Plant turned around and sold Tusko to the two trainers he hired, Jack O’Grady and Sleepy Gray. They announced plans to move Tusko to Portland.

The effort it took to load the seven-ton elephant on a trailer was well documented in the local papers, and Tusko didn’t make it easy.

He snorted, swayed and lunged while Gray and O'Grady prodded him with a pitchfork and a jackknife. His trunk broke free of the restraints. It took two hours to get him loaded using cables and a winch.

The front-page headlines blared: “Tusko objects to leaving Salem” and “Tusko gone but departure under protest.”

At his new digs in Portland, a Silverton company installed a heater to keep him warm through the winter.

Two months later, under seedy circumstances, Tusko had new owners, described in the Capital Journal as bail bond brokers.

They apparently secured the elephant as a commission for bailing Sleepy Gray out of jail. Gray had been arrested for intoxication, drunken driving, and hit-and-run. When police arrested him, they found Tusko cold and hungry.

Another new owner stepped forward, promising that Tusko would start touring in April after a special railroad car was built for him. But by May, the elephant was again abandoned, this time in Washington.

In the fall of 1932, Tusko was taken to Seattle and displayed at Westlake by his latest owner, H. C. Barber, described as a sideshow huckster.

Seattle Mayor John Dore, appalled by the animal’s condition, ordered the pachyderm confiscated on Oct. 8 and transferred him to the Woodland Park Zoo.

The zoo hired George “Slim” Lewis, a well-known elephant man, to tend to him. Children donated money to help pay for feed.

Tusko lived there the rest of his days, which are said to have been some of the happiest of his life.

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Rest in peace

Tusko collapsed and died on June 10, 1933. A necropsy was performed, and it was determined he died of a blood clot. He was 42.

Liens were placed on “the body, bones, tusks, teeth, hide and remains” and a web of litigation followed. Barber, still the owner of record, sued the zoo for $25,000 in “lost income.”

Newspapers reported that University of Washington medical students removed Tusko’s skin and bones. His 48-pound heart wound up on exhibit in the lobby of a hotel where the Washington state medical convention was held that year.

Seven years later, the Seattle port commission disclosed that Tusko’s hide was still in cold storage at its facility. It is not known what happened to it after that.

His bones are said to have toured as a sideshow act for about 15 years before being donated in December 1954 to the University of Oregon Museum of Natural History. They were a gift from the son of one of Tusko’s caretakers.

Legend has it that the bones were being displayed in Seattle and the son, who was a Duck, didn’t want the Huskies to have them.

“I don’t know whether that’s true or not,” said Davis, curator at the museum. “But it makes a good story.”

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His lasting legacy

Davis is Tusko’s caretaker now and has been since 2008. He oversees the use of the elephant’s bones for education, research, and outreach.

Tusko, in many ways, has been cared for better in death than he ever was in life.

The bones once were scattered in various storage areas at the museum and on campus, but Davis helped reunite them under one roof. They are now kept on padded shelves in a storage space that belongs to the earth sciences department.

“I don’t like to tell people exactly where they are because I don’t want people to go poking around for them,” Davis said. “They’re safe and secure.”

The storage area is controlled for humidity, which is important for the preservation of bones. Tusko’s tusks were sold before the skeleton came to the museum, but his teeth are still in the jaw.

Davis said there has been no official inventory, but he believes they have all 200 or so bones, about the same number as a human skeleton. The size difference is another matter.

In a piece published in the Oregon Quarterly, the university’s alumni magazine, the ribs are described as baseball bats and a single spinal vertebra as a dinner plate.

The skull is the largest piece, which Davis said takes three or four people to lift and weighs nearly 200 pounds.

It was pulled out of storage in 2015 when the TV show “Mysteries at the Museum” filmed a piece about Tusko for the Travel Channel. "The Unwanted Elephant" segment aired during Season 9, Episode 4.

The public rarely gets a glimpse at Tusko's remains, although occasionally when the museum has an event it will display one of his bones as a touch specimen for children.

The bones are used by undergraduate and graduate students at Oregon to compare fossil records of other mammals such as mastodons and gomphotheres. Professors also rely on them for lessons in biophysics, vertebrate evolution, and anthropology.

Davis and other faculty members dream of someday finding a place to put Tusko’s skeleton on display permanently. Space and money are elephant-sized obstacles, but imagine him back in the spotlight as the main attraction.

“Forward This” appears Wednesdays and Sundays and highlights the people,places, and organizations of the Mid-Willamette Valley. Contact Capi Lynn at clynn@StatesmanJournal.com or 503-399-6710, or follow her the rest of the week on Twitter @CapiLynn and Facebook @CapiLynnSJ.