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By Tim Ruzek

Editor’s Note: This is part one of a three-part column.

Two toboggan slides stayed busy in February 1891 as people of all ages waited for a turn to glide down to the frozen Cedar River as a brass band performed near downtown Austin.

“Many a visitor took his first toboggan ride,” the Mower County Transcript wrote Feb. 11, 1891.

For the first time, the town of 5,000 was hosting a Winter Carnival, with the main feature being an ice palace made of Cedar River ice slabs. This event was for locals along with hundreds of visitors who mostly came by train on special discounted rates with Austin’s three railroad branches.

Schools were given holidays on two afternoons to allow “a thousand merry children and young people” to join grownups in doing or watching winter sports on the Cedar’s frozen stretch known then as Lake Lincoln just upstream of the downtown dam. This stretch of river wasn’t the lake shape of today’s Austin Mill Pond.

A month earlier, George A. Hormel started operating his meatpacking business across the river in an old creamery along the Cedar that today is Hormel Foods Corp.

Yet, it was another Austin businessman – Lewis Foote (typically called L.A. Foote), owner of the Car Seal Works factory – who was the reason for the successful yet short-lived winter carnivals of 1891 and 1892.

Foote, a Civil War veteran who moved his business in early 1890 to Austin from the village of Lansing, built for the 1890-91 winter season a skating rink on the Cedar and a toboggan slide near his factory overlooking the river from Lansing Avenue (today’s First Dr. N.W. on the Cedars of Austin property).

“The name of L.A. Foote will go echoing down the ages as the originator of Austin’s first winter carnival,” the Transcript wrote Feb. 11, 1891.

A month after another successful winter carnival in early 1892, however, Foote was exploring options for growing his booming business outside of Austin. By June 1892, Foote had relocated his factory to Chicago, adding to an already difficult business time for Austin, which recently lost its clay brick factory to fire.

Enthusiasm for hosting a third Winter Carnival in February 1893 quickly waned.

In January 1893, many people favored another carnival with all its features except for an ice palace. Some predicted Foote would return on a special train from Chicago. A meeting that month to start planning, however, only attracted a hotel keeper, restaurant owner and newspaper reporter.

“Austin people have lost enthusiasm in the carnival business,” a Rochester newspaper wrote. 

It was a surprising development after two carnivals that newspapers around the state called highly successful and popular.

In May 1890, the Transcript ran a story about Foote’s Northwestern Car Seal Co. coming to Austin: “Another One of Austin’s Great and Thriving Industries Portrayed.”

Foote made a name for himself in Lansing and had become known nationally for his convenient, inexpensive products that secure freight in train cars from thieves. They replaced padlocks and keys.

Foote came to Mower County in 1869 from New York to take charge of Lansing’s railroad business. This made him familiar with the inconveniences of securing freight.

By 1881, Foote had a patent for seal and fastening that could not be cut or broken open without detection.

He made seals by hand on a small scale in Lansing, and they soon were in high demand by railroad companies.

When he moved in March 1890 to Austin, Foote had five patents for seals now made by machinery he invented. His growing business moved into a building with engine and store rooms, employing 11 people within two months.

During his last two winters in Lansing, Foote led outdoor, winter activities that included a toboggan slide. Months after moving to Austin, Foote proposed a toboggan slide and skating park along the Cedar, where Main Street used to end.

His ideas quickly grew into a broader plan for Austin to host a winter carnival led by Foote.

While the Canadian city of Montreal was the first in North America to create an ice palace, organizers in St. Paul moved quickly in 1885 to build one to attract tourism from Montreal, which had a smallpox epidemic.

According to Ramsey County’s historical society, St. Paul hired two brothers from Montreal to design and build its first palace mostly from Mississippi River ice. Towering at 106 feet, the palace opened in February 1886 for a carnival.

Austin launched its own winter carnival in February 1891 after unseasonably warm weather in 1889 and 1890 canceled St. Paul’s ice palace and carnival. St. Paul revived it in 1896. 

Austinites mimicked St. Paul’s carnival by building an ice castle along the Cedar River and using its Ice King vs. Fire King mythology.

Locals portrayed a “storming of the ice palace” where the Fire King must save the city from a perpetual winter caused by the Ice King, who throws snowballs. The Fire King attacks with fires and fireworks, forcing the Ice King to release his hold.