Heritagefest returns Friday

Festival will

broaden its

heritage horizons a bit this year

By KURT NESBITT

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- One of this town's time-honored summer traditions is going to have a couple new ingredients this summer.

It might not look like much now, but by the end of the week, the Brown County fairgrounds will once again host Heritagefest, that venerated celebration of this area's cultures and traditions.

And with it will come all the hallmarks festgoers have come to expect over the years.

Kathleen Backer, the new director of Heritagefest, Inc., said this year's festival -- her first being totally in charge of the operation -- is going to run very much as before, except with some subtle changes.

Bratwursts, beer, polkas, German bands and the Narren are the flour, water, sugar and eggs that usually go into the Heritagefest cake. But this year, there will be a few ingredients that are new and a few that are a little different from last year.

One obvious example is the new arena going up right where the Heritagefest parking lot was last year. When it's done next year, the city will have a new area for hockey, ice skating and other activities. The effect on the fairgrounds means that some things, like the open-air stage, are going to be in a different place from now on.

Parking won't be affected. Wristbands will be available at all of the gates.

Festgoers will also notice two ethnic food demonstrations, where Scandinavian, German, Mexican and Native American cooking will be on display. The festival's musical lineup will have five new German bands and one from Austria in addition to a couple crowd favorites. Mexican, Native American and Norwegian dance troupes are also included in the plans for this year's celebration.

Backer said the demonstrations are a pilot program, meant to test the water and see whether festgoers respond favorably to the changes.

"Heritagefest is looking to the future," Backer said from her home Saturday afternoon. "We're looking at taking over Oktoberfest, which is a distinctly German celebration. Heritagefest is meant to preserve the history of our area."

She said four cultures -- Native American, German, Norwegian and Mexican -- represent the area. For example, the Native American aspects represent the era before the New Ulm area was settled by the Germans and Norwegians that inhabit much of it now. Mexican culture is being represented because "it is a new-emerging culture," Backer said.

"To me, when you celebrate a culture, you validate it," she explained. "We're going to try it and see if it works."

Like the shift to a two-weekend festival before it, one recent pilot program that has returned is the Heritagefest shuttle bus, which will stop at local hotels, the glockenspiel, the New Ulm Chamber of Commerce office and the Brown County fairgrounds every 90 minutes.

Backer said she's expecting a crowd of between 35-40,000 people throughout the two weekends. She said she hopes this year's weather is more favorable than last year, when a good first weekend was spoiled by a heat wave that caused a $72,000 loss in revenues for Heritagefest.

"If I could, I would hope for good weather," Backer said. "Last year, we had a good first weekend, but the second weekend it was hot and unbearable, so we had poor attendance. The year before we had a record year."

Gates will open at 11 a.m. Friday and will run through Sunday on July 12-14 and July 19-21.