Will RAGBRAI pass through Storm Lake this summer?
A number of people have asked us that in recent weeks, including some cyclists from out of state who are already scoping out the Hawkeye State for overnight stops.
Storm Lake was supposed to have been a stop in 2020, but the pandemic scratched that event. The same communities were going to be on the route last year, but Storm Lake asked to be bypassed because of lingering covid concerns. Sac City took our place.
The City Beautiful, through Storm Lake United, applied to be a host this year, but the route won’t be disclosed by the sponsoring Des Moines Register until Jan. 28, 2023. The RAGBRAI route and the Iowa Poll are the Register’s two state secrets.
I’m not a betting man, but if I were, I’d wager Storm Lake will be on the route this July 22-29 for a couple reasons.
1. Visitors really like Storm Lake. In what is probably the most picturesque setting for cyclists in Iowa, our lakeshore parks and Buena Vista University can comfortably accommodate a crowd of 20,000.
2. This will be the 50th anniversary of RAGBRAI, so it makes sense for the route to retrace its steps from its first run in 1973, when Storm Lake was the first overnight stop after Sioux City.
I know. I was there.
I was a cub reporter who interviewed the original leaders of the ride, Register humor columnist Donald Kaul and features editor John Karras, in the parking lot of the then-Lamplighter Inn (now Budget Inn) on North Lake Avenue. They were accompanied by just a hundred foolhardy souls that first August. That year the event was Aug. 26-31. Other overnight stops that first year were Fort Dodge, Ames, Des Moines and Williamsburg.
After Kaul left the Register, former Storm Laker and Register Iowa Boy columnist Chuck Offenburger co-hosted RAGBRAI with Karras for 16 years, from 1983-1998.
The first year it was called “The Great Six-Day Bicycle Ride” because no one thought it would amount to anything more than a one-shot promotion. Organizers dreamed it up in just six weeks. It proved so popular that it was renewed the next year, a seventh day was added, and it was called SAGBRAI, for the “Second Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa.” It got its permanent name RAGBRAI (for Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa) in its third year and its popularity exploded, attracting bicyclists from across the nation and around the world.
Storm Lake has hosted RAGBRAI five times. The last time was in 2015, when about 50 riders camped in our yard.
While RAGBRAI isn’t confirmed yet, a couple other big events are on tap here.
Storm Lake is also celebrating a big birthday in 2023. The City Beautiful will be 150 years young.
“We are planning on having some 150th anniversary events this summer as well as throughout the year,” says City Manager Keri Navratil. Breanna Horsey, Executive Director of Storm Lake United, adds that “We will definitely be doing some special things at our annual events as well.”
Storm Lake’s 1973 weeklong Centennial celebration was a year in the making. I was part of the newspaper team that produced a massive 168-page special edition, the “Centenary Papers,” created by Gordon Linge. Gordon was also the first director of Witter Gallery, then expanded Santa’s Castle into an animated Christmas event that attracts thousands of visitors to Storm Lake every holiday season. Gordon went on with his wife Jill to become a museum designer in New Orleans but left a creative legacy in his hometown.
The Centennial also included a pageant starring local actors, dress contests for the women, beard contests for the men, kids games and lots of other activities throughout the week.
Storm Lake’s 125th anniversary in 1998 wasn’t as big a deal, but The Times published a special quasquicentennial edition that brought our community’s history up to date.
Last April this newspaper assumed the heritage as the oldest continuously operating business in Storm Lake — and Buena Vista County — when we consolidated the Pilot-Tribune into the Times Pilot. The Pilot began publishing in 1870, three years before the founding of Storm Lake.
Of course, Storm Lake will again salute our nation’s independence with the 45th annual Star Spangled Spectacular, Iowa’s premier Fourth of July celebration that attracts 20,000 visitors.
As we talk about history, whether it’s of our town or RAGBRAI, the importance of a community newspaper is brought into sharp focus. Much of our town’s foundation and the people who built it over the past century and a half would have been long forgotten were it not for newspapers preserving their stories with the permanence of ink on paper.
The Times Pilot will continue this tradition this summer, recording for posterity everything that happens in our community — from bicycles to birthdays to bottle rockets — as we have for 153 years.
Watch for it all in our special editions.
John Cullen is the founder and retired publisher of the Storm Lake Times Pilot. He can be reached at news@stormlake.com.
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