For over half a century, Steamboat Days has meant summer in Winona.
Over the years, parades, queens, fireworks and mayflies have become eagerly anticipated traditions (well, maybe not the mayflies).
This summer, under the direction of the newly organized Winona Steamboat Days Festival Association, Winona’s signature celebration returned to downtown Winona and the Levee for seven days of fun and excitement, recapturing the tradition begun 54 years ago.
In 1948, members of the Merchant’s Bureau of the Winona Association of Commerce decided to host a celebration of Winona’s river heritage.
For the price of a one dollar button, festival-goers had admission to four days of boat races, boxing, vaudeville and band concerts.
The committee contacted old-time rivermen from Minneapolis to St. Louis with invitations to the Steamboat Days Homecoming Banquet at the Winona Hotel.
People are also reading…
More than 100 veteran steamboatmen showed up for an evening of camaraderie and reminiscence.
The Miss Winona Pageant, then entering its third year, was incorporated into the festivities.
Rosalie Chritchfield was crowned Miss Winona 1948, while in a separate competition, Patricia Weishorn was named Miss Steamboat Days, attended by Lois Bauer and Bette Herbert.
Organizers estimated that more than 50,000 people participated in festival events July 21-25, declared the celebration a success and decided to make Steamboat Days an annual event.
Steamboat Days got a boost from the Minnesota Centennial in 1958.
Playing on the theme “from Sioux to Satellite,” organizers contrasted the city’s historic river heritage with the wonders of the twentieth century.
The Star Fireworks Co. promised a display worthy of the occasion, promising to launch an aerial shell 3 feet long and a foot in diameter to light up the skies over the Mississippi.
Closer to earth, the centennial theme would blaze forth in a 20-foot-tall map of Minnesota with 100 Years spelled out in 6-foot sizzling letters.
The 1960s saw Catfish Jack, a rather disreputable but high-spirited river pirate, emerge from the swamps with his crew of ruffians and rickety firetruck.
Jack would highlight the fest until decorum, propriety and political correctness banished him to the backwaters.
Jack’s emergence coincided with the arrival of a somewhat less welcome but more persistent guest.
Efforts to clean up the waters of the Mississippi encouraged the emergence of ever greater numbers of mayflies, ephemeral flying insects that hatch, breed and die within a matter of days.
In 1971, the mayfly swarms drawn to the lights of the carnival coated rides, games and customers to the point they were forced to shut down at 10:30 p.m.
In 1981, construction of the permanent levee squeezed Steamboat Days from its traditional downtown locale to Lake Park.
The temporary move was to last until 1998, when, in honor of the celebration’s 50th anniversary, it moved back downtown.
This year found Steamboat Days under the direction of a newly chartered, nonprofit organization, the Winona Steamboat Days Festival Association.
The group draws its membership from a broad cross-section of the community and is organized with the sole purpose of planning and operating Winona Steamboat Days.
