VIOLA TOWNSHIP, MINN. - Growing up, Brenda Hammel was good at trapping gophers to have a little extra pocket change for the annual Gopher Count.
Viola Township, like many small communities across Minnesota, pays a bounty for pairs of gopher feet. She could get a quarter for every pair, though today’s bounty is closer to $3 for every pocket gopher caught. Hammel and her husband Kevin turned in 60 pairs of gopher feet this year.
As she got older, the gophers weren’t as important to her as the sense of community as hundreds of distant relatives descend on the small township barely 10 miles east of Rochester on the third Thursday of each June.
“You see people from all over, everybody comes,” she said. “They take the day off a year ahead of time.”
Residents say the Viola Gopher Count, started in 1874, is the oldest celebration in the state and one of the longest-running celebrations in the U.S.
On its 150th anniversary this year, the township drew friends, family and acquaintances from across the U.S. and Canada to mark the history behind a treasured local event.
“Drive 20 miles one way or the other and nobody’s ever heard of it,” said Bob Bell, a genealogist from the San Fernando Valley in California whose mother grew up in the Viola area and whose grandparents were among the first Gopher Count royalty.
Bell said it was amazing how the event is so locally revered “and yet people don’t know about it.”