Lamoni Call opened the Surprise Theatre on 12 May 1909. The theater did so well that a company organized a year later to buy and enlarge the theater to 500 seats. A stage was to be added, "sufficiently large to accommodate the best traveling troupes that visit small towns."
This morning, an incipient blaze in a vacant building of the Elberta theatre, called out the fire department which had little difficulty in putting out the fire.
