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By Tim Ruzek

Editor’s Note: This is the third and final column following Austin’s winter carnival

In fall 1891, plans started earlier for Austin’s second winter carnival.

Foote already had $200 in subscriptions for what he called “Austin Winter Park” along the Cedar River. A $1 subscription provided daily admission for the entire season of skating, curling, tobogganing and “breaking your neck on skis and every kind of winter sport.”

Subscriptions gave money for the grounds, including a larger ice palace and two toboggan slides.

Despite talk of starting the palace earlier, weather and river conditions delayed progress.

In December 1891, excitement grew as two toboggan slides went up along the river – one next to Foote’s plant. Tobogganers could slide off one and head up to the other. At least 500 kids enjoyed the slides Thanksgiving Day.

“The skating rinks and toboggan slides were in good order and everything was well lighted up by electric lights,” the Mower County Transcript wrote, with a band playing at night. “There was just enough ozone in the air to put everyone in good spirits.”

Rochester launched a winter carnival in early January 1892, drawing about 125 Austinites.

“The experienced Austinites could show them how to celebrate,” the Transcript wrote.

Winona’s newspaper promoted Austin’s free carnival with ample hotel accommodations, reduced train rates within 100 miles, thousands of dollars in fireworks, parades and an ice castle storming.

On Jan. 20, 1892, the Transcript noted Austin had several times the amount of hotel rooms than usual for cities its size. Private homes also were opened to guests. It predicted the three-day carnival would be the “grandest spectacle ever witnessed.”

A park was created near the railroad bridge over the Cedar. Shinney Clubs – early “pond hockey” teams – and horse-trotting races competed on the river there.

Opening on a Wednesday, the carnival featured a 2 p.m. parade by all clubs followed by music and speeches. That evening, a Mardi Gras parade went through town, and Lincoln Park hosted tobogganing, skating and ski sliding.

The next day, a reception committee met groups at the noon trains, including a traveling men’s organization with 1,000 members for an annual convention. This day featured sports and races at Lincoln Park, a mile-long evening parade and dance at the Armory.

On the last day – Visitor’s Day – groups arrived from St. Paul, Minneapolis, Rochester, Spring Valley, Cresco, Mason City, Albert Lea, Owatonna and “hundreds of other places.”

The final day offered music, winter sports, an evening parade of uniformed clubs and, for the finale, the storming of the ice castle.

St. Paul’s Daily Globe reported the carnival went well and a “large quantity of fireworks was shot off and the ice castle was finely illuminated.”

The Transcript called the carnival a “brilliant success” despite temperatures above freezing, leading to remade ice blocks, hampered slides and muddy roads.

A man cut a hand badly on sharp ice while scaling the palace during the storming.

This carnival made statewide news as the Minneapolis “Sports and Amusements” weekly journal covered it with a front-page photo of the toboggan slides.

Referencing St. Paul losing enthusiasm in ice palaces, the journal reported “throngs of people came to Austin from all over Minnesota and a dozen other states.” It called Austin “one of the most beautiful little cities in Minnesota.”

The palace also drew praise. “As the sun rose high,” the journal wrote of it, “there gleamed from every angle streams of light and color superbly inimitable.”

At night, electric lights gave the palace an appearance of being “glittered as a million diamonds framed in frosted silver and appealed to every beholder by its marvelous beauty.”

After the carnival, the Transcript suggested ending it on a high note.

“If the carnival reached the high tide of success this year, it would be better to leave it there than to court a gradual decadence by trying it again too soon,” the Transcript wrote, adding the carnival’s best lesson was the value of a united effort.

Locals could put that toward other important goals, including a better county fair, the Transcript wrote. The carnival’s biggest beneficiaries were hotels and, even more, the saloons. Most merchants traded below normal.

“It would be possible to provide amply for winter sports by a skating rink, toboggan and ski slides and a course for speeding horses without the expense of the ice palace and the carnival features.”

Doing that would carry no risk of blizzards or “soft weather” because there always is “some part of the season suited” for winter sports.

A month later, Foote looked at moving his factory to Chicago. Austin already was reeling from losing brick and fiber factories to fire. Rail companies also were shedding jobs.

“Two of its most-important industries, and yet Austin remains a very wide-awake, flourishing city,” the Freeborn County Standard wrote.

In June 1892, Foote moved to Chicago, where he earned other patents. Foote died in 1915 from pneumonia in Chicago at age 75.

In December 1892, even with Foote’s absence, Austin opened new toboggan slides – 10 feet higher – and a skating rink. The slides offered a “leap of over 40 feet down the steep, swift decline (that) surely will give a novice unspeakable sensations.”

“Rosy cheeked boys and girls of Minnesota prefer the bracing atmosphere and invigorating sports of our snow-covered hills and our ice-bound rivers and lakes,” the Transcript wrote.

Despite positivity, an organizational meeting in January 1893 only drew three people. The carnival didn’t come back.

Amid economic struggles, Austinites didn’t know help was on the way. George A. Hormel’s new packinghouse on the Cedar started operations a year earlier.

A day before opening, Hormel and his fiancée, Lillian, spent the afternoon skating on the river.

“At sundown, we crossed the river for her first inspection of the plant,” Hormel wrote in his biography. “It was a thrilling moment.”