Can you imagine? Events at past Raspberry Festivals

​Days of fun through the years!

Festival committees and volunteers worked hard to come up with activities that young and old would enjoy. Reproducible pictures from these events are few, but can you imagine . . .

… Hubert Humphrey sending off a 150-mile, 35-car caravan to promote the festival to towns west of Hopkins in 1946

… a Wild West Rodeo in 1955

… Raspberry Rassle tournaments in the 1960s featuring pro-wrestlers like Hard-Boiled Haggerty

… a greased pig contest in 1944—and the pig was named Hitler!

… crates of raspberries being flown to Washington, D.C., New York, and other cities to promote the festival in 1951

… a Car Bash on Family Day in 1971 [2009.3.12, HHS Collections}

… water ski demonstrations at Shady Oak Lake in 1981 [Pictured: Shady Oak Lake, 1960s, 2006.236.31, HHS Collections]

… a Twisterama featured at the 1963 street dance [2018.35.2, HHS Collections]

… a wartime shortage of shortening cancelled the pie-eating contest in 1945

… Mutt Parades

… a Guinness World Records marathon twister contest in 1992 and a record-setting BUNNY-HOPkins bunny hop down Mainstreet in 1997

… the Minnesota Disc Dog Frisbee Competition in 2012

… the Hopkins All-Stars diamond ball team playing the only blind ball team in the country in 1942 (Diamond ball was an old variation of softball.) [Pictured: Excelsior Baseball Team 1906, 2009.14.11, HHS Collections]

… a horse show at the Hennepin County Fairgrounds racetrack in 1936 (now Central Park) [2006.245.4, HHS Collections]

… Casey Jones as grand marshal for the Kiddie Parade in 1958 [Pictured: Kiddie Parade in 1987, 2010.33.24, HHS Collections]

… the square dance that was the first festival dance on the mainstreet in 1949

… the Raspberry Festival featured on the Food Network in 2004

… lawnmower races at Country Village in the 1970s [2018.35.37, HHS Collections]

… a sky-diving exhibition in Central Park in 1973 [2018.35.12, HHS Collections]

… frog-jumping contests -- popular in the 1960s