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A resource for reliable information about significant people, places, events, and things in Minnesota history.
Parade floats passing down a Minneapolis Street for Aquatennial's Grande Day Parade, 1960.
Started in 1940 by a group of businessmen looking to promote their city nationally, the Minneapolis Aquatennial has been drawing crowds every July since for parades, pageantry, and crowd events, highlighting Minneapolis’s status as the “City of Lakes.”
The idea for the Aquatennial was born in 1939 out of a desire to promote Minneapolis as a vacation and business destination through an annual festival rivalling Mardi Gras, the Rose Parade, and, closer to home, St Paul’s Winter Carnival. After witnessing a large parade in Winnipeg for Great Britain’s King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, a group of Minneapolis businessmen including W. N. “Win” Stephens and Tom Hastings concluded that a similar spectacle would improve Minneapolis’s reputation nationally after a tumultuous decade of labor strife and gangster violence. With the help of veteran volunteers from the Winter Carnival, they organized a ten-day festival with almost 200 events in less than a year.
The name “Aquatennial” was chosen by contest to highlight the abundance of lakes, rivers, and parks around Minneapolis. Sail and motor boat races were to take place on Lake Calhoun (Bde Maka Ska),* and a 450-mile canoe derby down the Mississippi River from Bemidji would arrive on the first day of the festival. A massive airshow and an interdenominational sermon at Powderhorn Park the next day would both draw more than 100,000. The parades, however, were the main attraction. With support from business sponsors, promotional Aquatennial pin sales, and thousands of volunteers, the inaugural Grande Day parade featured eighty-six elaborate floats, 15,000 marchers, and fifty bands, drawing a crowd of more than 200,000. Even more attended the nighttime Torchlight Parade later in the week. Attendance would grow even higher in coming years: 750,000 would watch 1962’s Torchlight Parade.
Along with the parades, the Queen of the Lakes contest has been an Aquatennial mainstay since 1940, drawing contestants from local pageants across the state. A panel of judges choose the next year’s queen and princesses based on personality, public speaking skills, and professionalism. After winners of the pageant are crowned, they serve as ambassadors for Minneapolis in parades nationwide, travelling more miles than the winner of any pageant in the country except Miss America. The contest has undergone significant changes since its origin; while queens do not have the same high-flying international trips and free cars they enjoyed into the sixties, they receive educational scholarships. In the mid-1960s, newspapers stopped listing the queens’ ages, weights, measurements, and home addresses.
The Aqua Follies, a highly choreographed aquatic revue show, was introduced to great fanfare in 1941, and provided the festival with crucial revenue for years. A permanent pool, diving platforms, and a stage were built on Lake Wirth to host multiple shows for 6,000 spectators at a time. Twenty-four women known as the Aqua Dears practiced routines for months at the University of Minnesota pool. For many years, they were all required to be exactly five feet and four inches tall and weigh 125 pounds. After the audience was warmed up by stunt divers and comics, professional dancers and the Aqua Dears performed a number with elaborate sets and costumes flown in from Broadway and Hollywood.
Over the next half-century, several programs were added to bring in younger audiences. 1967’s festival featured a live show called “The Happening” featuring Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo Springfield, and the Electric Prunes. In an event promoted by the American Dairy Association, contestants raced boats homemade from milk cartons across Lake Calhoun. The eccentric event was an Aquatennial staple from 1971 until 2015, and was revived by a separate nonprofit in 2017. In the late eighties, an event called Aqua Jam drew hundreds of skateboarders competing for prizes and sponsorships to the festival.
Going into the new millennium, the Minneapolis Aquatennial Association neared bankruptcy as corporate sponsors, individual contributors, and contest fees could not keep up with programming costs. In 2002, the organization was absorbed by the Minneapolis Downtown Council (DTC), a business association which already included many of the companies which sponsored the festival for years. Simultaneously, the Aquatennial Ambassador Organization(AAO) was created to run the Queen of the Lakes program and maintain connections with festivals across the state and nationally. While the length and scope of the festival has been reduced in recent years to reflect busier summer schedules and a greater focus on Downtown Minneapolis, the Aquatennial continues to promote the “City of Lakes” with free shows, parades, contests, pageantry, and fireworks.
*Editor's note: At the time the Aquantennial was founded, the formal name of the lake recognized by state government was Lake Calhoun. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources restored the lake's Dakota name, Bde Maka Ska, in 2018.
“13 Jailed in Clash Linked to Wig Fight.” Minneapolis Star, July 20, 1967.
Albinson, Pam. Seventy-Five Years of The Minneapolis Aquatennial. Minneapolis: Nodin Press, 2014.
Baule, John. “Ahhquatennial—Fifty Fabulous Years. Hennepin County History 48, no. 3 (Summer 1989): 23–27.
Chin, Richard. “After Being Axed, the Popular Milk Carton Boat Race Returns to Minneapolis.” Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 3, 2017.
Hafften, Ken. Conversation with author, September 2018.
Mellin, Judy, Pamela Jo Albinson, and Connie Haenny. “Crowning Memories and Lost Images: The Aquatennial Queen of the Lakes.” Hennepin History 61, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 4–34.
Minneapolis Aquatennial Souvenir Program Collection, 1940–. Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul.
O’Brien, K. Marie. “Fantasies on Parade.” Hennepin County History 73, no. 3 (Fall 2014): 19–27.
Shumaker, Steve. “Building Parade Floats: The Life of a ‘Floater.’” Hennepin County History 73, no. 3 (Fall 2014): 29–35.
“Sonny Without Cher” Twin Cities Music Highlights, 1960.
http://twincitiesmusichighlights.net/events/#1960
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After an aquatic revue show on Cedar Lake draws lackluster crowds in 1940, Aquatennial planners build a permanent stage and pool on Lake Wirth for the more ambitious Aqua Follies program in 1941. Combined with commemorative pin sales, ticket sales for the glitzy and highly regimented performance will bankroll free Aquatennial programming for more than two decades.
The first Aquatennial draws hundreds of thousands from around the Midwest for a week of festivities. Movie star Gene Autry is chosen over Shirley Temple to serve as grand marshal.
The Aqua Follies show at Theodore Wirth Park, with stunt diving, physical comedy, and intensely choreographed synchronized swimming shows, proves an instant hit, providing the festival with crucial ticket revenue for decades.
After debate over whether the festival should be cancelled for the sake of wartime rationing, civic leaders conclude that the Aquatennial would boost morale at home: 400,000 attend an “On To Victory” parade promoting war bonds.
In the last weeks of World War II, 1945’s Queen of The Lakes contest draws dozens of women from “war plants and armed forces divisions.” Mary Thom replaced 1944’s queen, Margaret Cary, after Margaret’s marriage made her ineligible for the title.
While the Queen of The Lakes pageant winner’s yearlong, 100,000-miles-plus Minneapolis goodwill tour can be grueling, the position comes with perks. 1955's winner, Marlene Dolbec, models for Christian Dior in Paris and has an audience with the pope.
After sponsoring elaborate floats in previous years like a full-size replica of a Mississippi paddle boat and a 167-foot long decades fashion show, Dayton’s commissions “The Song of India,” featuring three Indian elephants.
Citing a lack of new participants, the Paul Bunyan Canoe Derby, a 450-mile race down the Mississippi from Bemidji to Minneapolis, is cancelled after twenty-two years. The Aqua Follies are cut two years later as the Wirth Lake pool falls into disrepair.
Tensions between North Minneapolis’ African American and Jewish communities boil over into demonstrations on Plymouth Avenue after police violently break up a fight between two black women at the Torchlight Parade.
The Milk Carton Boat Races on Lake Calhoun becomes one of the Aquatennial’s most popular events, with 1000+ contestants building makeshift watercraft from half-gallon milk cartons.
The Freedom Train, a travelling exhibition of American artifacts, stops at Minnehaha Park during the Aquatennial. Objects on the twenty-six-car train include an original copy of the Louisiana Purchase and Martin Luther King Jr.’s pulpit.
Thanks in part to an enthusiastic response to the year’s theme, “Mexico Magnifico,” by the Twin Cities metro’s growing Latino community, the festival has record attendance levels
About 25,000 people turn out for the “Skateboard Jam” contest, where more than 300 compete on half pipes near Lake Calhoun for prizes and sponsorships.
After two decades of frequent budget shortfalls, dwindling corporate sponsorships, and negligible municipal funding, the Aquatennial transfers ownership to the Minneapolis Downtown Council, a business association.
After cancelling the Holidazzle parade in favor of a holiday market, the Downtown Council streamlines the Aquatennial for a busier audience and to highlight Minneapolis’ downtown by limiting it to a long weekend and cutting the programming at Bde Maka Ska
Made possible by the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund through the vote of Minnesotans on November 4, 2008. Administered by the Minnesota Historical Society.
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