What’s the oldest small-town festival in Minnesota?

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Minnesota is home to dozens of quirky small-town festivals, from Braham Pie Day to Potato Days in Barnesville. At least two have claimed to be the state’s longest-running.

Tim Keating grew up attending one of them: Stiftungsfest, in Norwood Young America.

During the town’s annual summertime celebration of German music and heritage, he played in the softball tournament, listened to plenty of polka music and ate his share of the festival’s famous burgers.

Keating, who lives in nearby Cologne, wrote to Curious Minnesota, the Strib’s reader-powered reporting project, to ask: What’s the oldest small-town festival in Minnesota?

“I’m curious because over the years I’ve seen several celebrations claim to be the ‘oldest in Minnesota.’” he said. “And of course, I’m hoping Stiftungsfest is that one.”

Stiftungsfest, which dates back to 1861, is indeed the state’s longest consecutively running small-town festival, according to newspaper records and a Minnesota Historical Society account.

Both Norwood Young America’s Stiftungsfest and the Viola Gopher Count have long advertised themselves as the state’s oldest.

But in 1981, Stiftungsfest organizers contacted the Plainview News, the community paper in the Viola area, to set the record straight.

The news ended up on the front page: “Gopher count challenged as state’s oldest continuing summer festival.”

“It was a happening roughly equivalent to the defrocking of the queen,” the Rochester Post Bulletin wrote at the time.

The count’s chairperson told the Post Bulletin he had always heard the Viola Gopher Count was the oldest, but admitted that he had moved to town only 14 years before.

Current Viola Gopher Count organizers did not respond to an interview request.

The annual event, held on the third Thursday in June, celebrated 151 years this summer.

There’s still a competition to see who trapped the most gophers (54 people participated this year, according to news accounts) but the event has become a community celebration, with a parade, disco party, bingo and live music.

While 151 is an impressive anniversary, Stiftungsfest, which means “founders day celebration” in German, marked its 164th annual celebration last month.

It began in 1861, when a man named Carl Bachmann founded a German-language singing group called Pioneer Maennerchor, according to a Minnesota Historical Society article. That summer, the group held a picnic for members and families at a park in what was then the town of Young America. (Norwood and Young America combined into one city in 1997.)

In 1937, the Minneapolis Journal noted that “the festival has been staged each year since Abraham Lincoln was president.” A few years later, the Minneapolis Times-Tribune wrote that the annual picnic and sing-along was “a forerunner to our modern community sings.”

In 1956, the year of Young America’s centennial, Stiftungsfest expanded to become a three-day celebration and included a parade for the first time. Since then, they’ve been holding a parade every five years (2026 will be a parade year).

In the 1980s, organizers began bringing bands from Germany to perform, and in the 1990s, Young America redesigned Willkommen Park, where the festival is held, to look like an old German town.

The annual celebration has only missed a few years since 1861 — cancelling during wartime and because of food shortages, polio and COVID, said LaVonne Kroells, president of Norwood Young America’s Willkommen Heritage and Preservation Society.

How did the event become such an enduring tradition? “Part of it is community pride,” said Kroells, who said she has attended for more than six decades. “And even though Stiftungsfest means ‘founders day celebration,’ it is geared around music to this day.”

“It’s always very special. The community looks forward to it. The new people that move into town are amazed that, really, this is happening in this small town of 4,000 people, you know?” said Kroells.

“My favorite part is just sitting and listening to the music under the big tent. And visiting with people. You see people that you haven’t seen in years.”

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