Summer festivals 'build community' and boost business across Minnesota

MINNESOTA LAKE, MINN. – Three hours before the parade — a cavalcade of tractors, freeze pop-throwers and drumlines clad in Hawaiian shirts — three princesses in evening gowns gave interviews with a radio station out of Blue Earth.

"It's really hard to compare," said Paige Gunsolus, a Maple River High School student who was a runner-up in 2023′s Miss FestAg competition. "I've been coming, geez, every year."

It's FestAg in Minnesota Lake, a town of 662 awash in fields of southern Minnesota corn and soybeans about 90 minutes south of the Twin Cities. The midsummer portmanteau denoting the annual two-day Festival of Agriculture means a Lions Club pork burger stand, high school bands marching downtown, even the Johnny Holm Band playing the street dance.

Each summer, towns across Minnesota count on festivals to draw locals back to their roots, create a sense of community and bolster their businesses. Plus, they're a chance to sell small-town life to anyone not yet convinced.

"Tradition is pretty big in small towns," said Jeff Ramsley, longtime mayor of Minnesota Lake. "And this celebration puts us on the map."

It's a similar recipe used across the state.

Lake George touts its Blueberry Festival. There's Pie Day in Braham. Waterville even celebrates Bullhead Days by frying up the little bony swimmers fishermen are usually disappointed to find on the end of their lines instead of a meaty walleye.

Economic boost

In a world of big-box chains and remote work, these excuses to throw parades and put on car derbies are also one of a handful of chances to connect neighbors. And they also generate a small boom for local economies.

The University of Minnesota Tourism Center's reports on county fairs showed the 2018 Beltrami County Fair in Bemidji generated $4.43 in spending for every $1 the local agriculture association spent to host the event.

A similar U survey of the Pine County Fair found that the popular demolition derby, featuring cars crushing other cars, draws enthusiasts from the far reaches of the Twin Cities. The average age of attendees is 34, and the event is economically democratic, with a household income under $100,000.

Xinyi Qian, the Tourism Center's director, said the popularity of such events is easy to explain.

"We don't want to be bowling alone," said Qian, invoking Robert D. Putnam's 2000 nonfiction book on the growing isolation in American communities.

The national narrative of decline in small towns is, of course, entrenched. But the U.S. Census Bureau has estimated small upticks in the nation's rural population since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Down south in Minnesota Lake, for more than 70 years in corn and soybean-bursting Faribault County, FestAg has meant a mid-week party downtown beneath the shadow of the grain elevators. The festival has sometimes drawn as many as 10,000 people.

During this year's FestAg, the Addis family of nearby Delavan sat front and center along the parade route.

"There's as many here as you see at the fair in Blue Earth," said Deb Addis, a newbie to FestAg.

Ray, her husband, added: "I think there's more."

The Faribault County Fair in the town of Blue Earth, with a population of about 3,000, is a much larger event. The 14,000-strong county, however, has seen a 4.3% decline in population since 2010, the fastest drop among counties bordering Iowa.

Yet according to a report from the Center for Rural Policy and Development in St. Peter, Minnesota regions with a mixture of rural and urban populations outpaced entirely urban areas in the rate of growth between 2020 and 2022.

Julie Tesch, president of the Center for Rural Policy and Development, lives on a farm outside Waldorf (pop. 202), just east of Minnesota Lake. She sees echoes of rural contraction in the necessity of these folksy, once-a-year get-togethers.

"You used to go to a basketball or football game to see your neighbors, but now we have kids in the Waldorf area going to four different school districts," said Tesch. "So there's no way to build community."

She also noted the economic lifeline for local commerce.

"You're not seeing McDonald's having a booth," Tesch said.

Small (town) businesses

On Minnesota Lake's Main Street, two sisters opened up cafe Our Place & Little Town Treasure earlier this year. Laura Sonnek and Marion Roessler — a former HVAC technician and plumber, respectively — rattled off a litany of former businesses that once dotted downtown: a clothier, a grocery, a hardware store.

"We liked the idea of putting some life back into this little town," Sonnek said.

Out on Hwy. 22, Minnesota Lake's largest employer, Nordaas American Homes, custom builds houses across the Upper Midwest. Its designs often begin with a napkin drawing of an owner's dreams.

"Sunday night dinners," said Kyle Roeker, a sales representative who grew up outside of town. "That's often what we're selling."

The company's footprint expanded during the pandemic. While company manager Todd Redig said the business doesn't necessarily sign any contracts off FestAg, he still understands the celebration's social import.

"I saw a buddy from Chicago the other day downtown," Redig said. "It's really like a family reunion."

This year, Nordaas raffled off a garden shed they towed in the parade.

Many small towns in Minnesota have shed images of A Prairie Home Companion's "Lake Wobegon" in the 21st century, as residents of bedroom communities commute into work in the Twin Cities or other hubs. In many ways, the parades and laundry-list of events become themselves the ties that bind.

Maureen Franek, who sits on the nonprofit board overseeing Kolacky Days in Montgomery, marshals "hundreds of volunteers" running everything from the volleyball tournament to the tractor pull.

In Willmar, Bollig Engineering, a firm working with towns with populations under 5,000, dispatches candy-tossing volunteers in company vehicles to a dozen parades a summer: from Tracy's Box Car Days to Bonanza Valley Days in Brooten.

"We want them to know us as neighbors," owner Brian Bollig said.

Community tradition

At the horticulture competition in Minnesota Lake, raggedy weeds pile against the upright piano as Gloria Harris' daughter-in-law wheels the 102-year-old into the building. For years, Harris, who has attended every FestAg, ran a beauty salon out of her home. For the big celebration, she donned a sharp blue jacket to match her blue eyes.

"I think we've always had a parade," said Harris, adding the asterisk of the year that activities moved into the school gymnasium. "But that was because of the storms."

Since the pandemic, the staples of summer festivals have had a wobbly go. St. Paul's Grand Old Day returned in 2023 after years off because of financial challenges. Minneapolis' Basilica Block Party is back next month, though no longer at the Basilica, after the music festival took two years off.

Richard Staloch, a Minnesota Lake council member who oversees the festival's finances, said FestAg cost around $40,000 in 2000. Now it's closer to $70,000.

"People around this area really look forward to this," said Staloch, adding donations largely pay for the festival. "Nobody wants to have it die on their watch."

At 7 p.m., the parade lurched forward with the grand marshals on the back of a convertible, high school bands from Maple River and neighboring United South Central marching down Main. The carnival rides go momentarily quiet. Along the path, men with baseball caps drink beers in koozies. Moms in spaghetti straps wave to high school friends, chasing after kids coming breathtakingly close to parade float wheels in search of sweet giveaways.

When the Shriners scream down the street, everyone takes a collective step back.

By dusk, the street packed with people, the princesses take the stage. A demolition derby enthusiast who wants to go to cosmetology school struts across in a bright blue dress, her blonde hair tossed together in a bun. Alas, the crown will go to her friend.

"It's probably your first time in Minnesota Lake, huh?" said the announcer, turning to Miss Minnesota Teen from Thief River Falls.

Down the street, a parent buckles a sobbing child into a car seat. Too much ice cream and candy. Tomorrow, crews will have cleared the streets of mushed confections and forgotten wrappers.

But for that one Wednesday night a year, there's nothing bigger than standing in the heart of this small town's main street as the neon carousel spun, long before a steady stream of headlights lined the roads back out of town.