THE BILL POSTERS MIXED A GREAT BATCH OF PASTE.

We refer to the posters that the itinerant circus used to attach to any available bare wall as "ephemera," as they're supposed to biodegrade, or to be removed by the property owner, or sometimes to be over-posted by the opposition brigade of a rival circus working the territory.

In Durand, Wisconsin, though, tavernkeeper Ron Berger found something unusual while he was working on connecting two buildings with an interior passage.

By the time Berger was done excavating and researching, he had unearthed a 9-foot-high by 55-foot-long, multi-sheet, full-color paper lithograph circus poster advertising the Great Anglo-American Circus and Menagerie performing in Durand on Aug. 17, 1885, according to the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram.

"It's one of the oldest and best preserved circus posters in the world," Berger said. "It's considered a one-and-only type of thing."

While Berger immediately recognized the discovery would throw a wrench into his plan to quickly connect the Corral Bar & Riverside Grill with the adjacent building to create a banquet facility, he felt a duty to preserve the historical artifact.

In the best entrepreneurial tradition, the family uses the poster to provide a theme for the newly opened banquet room.

Ultimately, it took two years for the special events room to open, complete with a mirror-backed bar and metal ceiling that Berger believes date back to the 19th century. But, ladies and gentlemen, the main attraction, undoubtedly, is the massive circus poster that covers an entire wall. The artwork is enclosed in special glass to protect it from being damaged by light and prying fingers.

The banquet hall is named the Orton Room in honor of Miles Orton, a world-renowned performer who owned and managed the Great Anglo-American Circus. Orton was famous for stand-up horseback riding with his children on his shoulders — an act breathtakingly depicted in the Durand poster.

Wisconsin is the North American home of the itinerant circus, including the Great Anglo American.

Pete Schrake, an archivist at Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin, made the pilgrimage to Durand to see the discovery and was duly impressed, particularly because the find involved a Wisconsin-based circus in a Badger State town.

"This is a standout piece," Schrake said. "What really made this one stand out is its size — it's the longest one I know of — and that it's an amazing poster."

That's high praise from a historian for a museum with an inventory of about 9,000 circus posters [for instance].

Schrake said the Durand poster is a relic from the golden age of circus, when the shows toured via railroad and advance teams would paper the towns on the schedule with posters and handbills promoting their acts.

"Circuses, in their day, were pioneers of mass media and in-your-face, bombastic advertising," he said. "That bill stand is really a perfect example of that kind of approach."

How good was that batch of paste?

The artwork, originally displayed on an exterior wall facing the river to promote the circus to boat traffic, was printed on paper intended to weather away after a month or two.

The story of how it survived is a bit of a mystery, although Berger feels confident he has figured it out.

Shortly after the show, he assumes someone erected a building over the wall — installing wooden studs less than half an inch from the artwork — and never bothered to remove the poster.

The circus performers, ranging from aerialists and elephant riders to lions and giraffes, were entombed behind a wall for more than a century until Berger serendipitously freed them.

"It should never have survived," said Berger, who has become somewhat of a circus historian while researching the poster's background.

And yet it did, and thanks to the Berger clan for making the extra effort to keep the poster safe while renovating the banquet hall.