Welcome to the latest episode of the Growing Destinations Podcast. Our guests, Jeff Steinborn and Denny Graham, from the Historic Henderson Auto Society give us a fascinating look into how their Classic Car Roll-in event went from a small gathering of 20 automobile aficionados to a weekly spectacle that attracts 275 cars in Henderson, Minnesota. Through their stories, we learn about the incredible impact this event has had on their small town, both in terms of community bonding and economic impact.
Henderson Classic Car Roll In
Experience Rochester, MN
Welcome to the latest episode of the Growing Destinations Podcast. Our guests, Jeff Steinborn and Denny Graham, from the Historic Henderson Auto Society give us a fascinating look into how their Classic Car Roll-in event went from a small gathering of 20 automobile aficionados to a weekly spectacle that attracts 275 cars in Henderson, Minnesota. Through their stories, we learn about the incredible impact this event has had on their small town, both in terms of community bonding and economic impact.
Henderson Classic Car Roll In
Experience Rochester, MN
The Growing Destinations podcast is brought to you by Experience Rochester. Learn more about Minnesota's third largest city, which is home to Mayo Clinic and features wonderful recreational and entertainment opportunities, by visiting experiencerochestermncom.
Speaker 2:When we set up the historic Henderson Auto Society, we did it to protect the event. It gave it some credibility. And there's some other things we can do grant writing and so forth but one of the criteria in becoming that non-profit was we chose education, because that is what's happening here.
Speaker 3:And what I love to see is the grandpa is taking the grandkids up and down the street and pointing out the interiors or something in a car that they would have no clue. So it's an educational thing as well. Not only is it just visual, but it's a visual education experience for a lot of people.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Growing Destinations podcast, where we take a deep dive into destination development and focus on a wide range of topics, from tourism and entertainment to economic development and entrepreneurism and much more. I'm your host, bill Vaughn-Bank. Jeff Steinborn and Denny Graham are leaders of the historic Henderson Auto Society in Henderson, minnesota. Along with dozens of volunteers, jeff and Denny organized a weekly Henderson Classic Car Roll-in every Tuesday night throughout the summer 18 in total from May through September. On average, there are 275 classic cars on display each week. It's a massive undertaking where the town's population easily doubles, with people rolling in from all parts of the country. It also gives the community an economic boost. For Jeff and Denny, the multi-generational family, fun and educational experience are what make it rewarding. We're on location in Henderson, minnesota, for the Henderson Classic Car Roll-in and I'm joined by two of the organizers, jeff Steinborn and Denny Graham, from the historic Henderson Auto Society. Jeff and Denny, welcome to the Growing Destinations podcast. Thanks very much for having us.
Speaker 3:Thank you very much.
Speaker 1:You're leaders of the historic Henderson Auto Society that produces this weekly classic car roll-in in Henderson, minnesota. Before we discuss the classic car roll-in, tell us a bit about yourselves, jeff.
Speaker 2:I am the president of the newly formed, historic Henderson Auto Society. I've grown up in Henderson and I went to college in Mankato, came back a couple of little business ventures and started my own business, evolution Shirts. So I'm right on Main Street. I'm invested in this community. My wife and I and our three children some of them have moved away. This is where we call home. Denny, how about you?
Speaker 3:I have lived here all my life. I'm 70 years old. I'm a retired rural mail carrier out of the post office. I did that for 42 years. Wow, it'll be six years on September 1st that I've been retired. I'm also a realtor in the area. I've done that for about 40 years and I continue to do that. We raised our three sons in Henderson and our nine grandchildren are all real close to us. So I'm a firm believer in if you're a firm believer in if you want to do something for your community, you should get involved and not sit back and complain Good advice For a person who has never experienced the Henderson car classic roll-in, and that includes me.
Speaker 1:give us a rundown, Jeff.
Speaker 2:It's a roll-in. So play on those words. You just roll your classic vehicle into our community.
Speaker 1:No registration.
Speaker 2:Well, we do register, but I'm not registering the cars, we're registering the people. We don't share that information, we keep it internally. This isn't a cruise and it's not a car show. We don't hand out awards, but it's a very relaxed kind of a no rules. Whatever you think is a classic is welcome.
Speaker 1:And there's a lot of them.
Speaker 2:Yes, you want to get into some stats.
Speaker 1:Yes, let's go into the numbers.
Speaker 2:Just for this year it looks like we're averaging around 275 classic automobiles. It's really hard. Denny and I do the counting and we know when we hit a certain street and the cars are full up to that point, we know that it's that amount. It's the sideline areas that fill up. Those are the ones we're interested in counting. When we fill up the big grassy area on the east end of town, we know that's a big night. This thing started out with maybe 20 cars. There goes one of them right now. So we're averaging around that 275, 300.
Speaker 1:So it started with 20. Yeah, is that right OK?
Speaker 2:That was on the Chamber still am the Henderson Chamber and I remember the couple that started this event. They came to the chamber looking for support and it was the following meeting. They came back and reported that it was a fantastic night. We had 20 cars and it was it went for. We filled up one block.
Speaker 1:When was that?
Speaker 2:2009.
Speaker 1:So this has some legs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're in year 15.
Speaker 1:Denny, this is all volunteers supported, correct?
Speaker 3:Correct. We put in a lot of time. You'll see a bunch of us working here in the booth registering people for door prizes, selling t-shirts and caps, et cetera. We also have a group of people out on the streets parking cars, assisting people, and then there's other things that go on. We have people on our committee that deal with the food trucks that come in every week and the vendors, that type of thing. So there's a lot of things that go on and what we do every Tuesday night.
Speaker 3:A lot of small communities would consider it their annual celebration, if you know what I mean you know, the amount of work that goes into it and we've gotten I guess you could say we're kind of in a groove and everybody has their job and we all know what we have to do to get it done.
Speaker 1:How many volunteers does it take to produce this weekly event every Tuesday throughout the summer?
Speaker 2:There's a group of 10 committed to the board, the committee, that are truly members of the Historic Henderson Auto Society and we meet, I guess in the off season, periodically, but it's about once a month. As we get closer to the show it's every two weeks, as once the show begins it is about 80 volunteers total Every Tuesday. What we do is separate them into teams and we take these 18 events that, by the way, it's 18 of these car show, car rollins and we divide them into three teams of six. So we don't want it, we don't want to have that burnout factor going on. So we feel a lot of people are happy with that. They come and help us, they. So basically they like to come even when they're not helping. But now they just committed to three nights of volunteering.
Speaker 1:How big of an undertaking is it? Every week we talk about up to 80 volunteers, but I'm assuming you need permitting and just the organizing behind it. How big of an undertaking is it, Denny?
Speaker 3:It is a big undertaking. I think a lot of people take it for granted. When they come to town and see a couple hundred cars and a variety of cars, they don't realize the work that goes behind the scene. Behind the scenes, the things that we have to accomplish, just little things like insurance or I can't, off the top of my head, I can't think of other permits.
Speaker 3:Not so much permits. We're pretty much what we do. We don't need the permits. But of course we have to have an inspection for our electrical stuff and the food vendors have to do their thing. As far as permitting is concerned, we can kind of encourage them to get these jobs done.
Speaker 2:But as far as permits for the actual roll in itself, Basically, the rolling is happening, the cars are on Main Street, the right of way, state Highway 19, but everybody else is sitting on private property.
Speaker 2:Okay, let me where we are performing this podcast. We're on private property, so everybody needs permission to be here and be there, and it's picking up the trailer at six in the morning, putting it in the right spot and then taking the trailer out the next morning by six in the morning, making sure some of these things happen. Garbage pickup is a big deal.
Speaker 3:I bet.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot of logistics.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a massive event every week. I imagine that it attracts people from outside of Henderson.
Speaker 3:It really does, Not only out in around the state, but from around the country. Really, yes, We've had several states. In fact, one time last year we had an individual here from I believe it was New Mexico that questioned us about how we do this. We frequently get people from other communities that ask us how do you do this and could we make this work in our community? And I think the biggest thing when people ask us those questions is not so much the nuts and bolts of the speaker system, but it's is your community going to support you and do you have the volunteers in your community to do that? Because I've seen in other communities where they have organizations, but if you don't get the people in and get them to continue to come back, things can peter out real quickly, and we try to keep as many people involved as we can.
Speaker 1:The other thing I'm curious about is Henderson is a town of population 960. I imagine that at least doubles every Tuesday night.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Really hard to count the visitors that are here. Sure, and, by the way, when we make a car count we might be missing a few here and there. We're not counting every visitor, every car enthusiast or fan. That's really tough to count. We've got a registration system by computer. We have a barcode scanner and we're able to scan repeat customers, but not everybody's registering.
Speaker 1:You double, plus the population of Henderson Tuesday nights throughout the summer. That also means economic impact for the community.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So if you want to get into some dollars, we can. We did put out a survey a few years ago just to get an understanding. We had some basic questions we wanted answered. But then we asked we've had a study done before and it appears that people are spending just under $30 per visit, and then multiply that by Do the math.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good In terms of what people can expect. Obviously classic cars, but also motorcycles, right.
Speaker 3:We get a ton of motorcycles. We used to count them, but there's so many motorcycles we do, and you know they're coming and going, so we don't even estimate how many motorcycles. But we reserve about two, two and a half blocks on both sides of the street just for motorcycles, and they're a big part of it too.
Speaker 1:Food vendors. I mean, let's talk about what people can expect for their very first time to Henderson for this classic car rolling.
Speaker 3:We have a variety of food trucks and, jeff, maybe you better tell because I can think of we have barbecue, we have Mexican food, we have uh, we have steak sandwiches. We have of course ice cream, we have Jersey Mike's, we have smashed potatoes.
Speaker 1:So people should come hungry.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's kind of like a mini state fair. You know, there you can go up and down the street and there's food trucks all around. Plus, we have a farmer's market up the street where you can get fresh produce. Canned goods, you know, are not canned goods, but I pickles and kettle, corn and things like of that nature.
Speaker 2:Danny and I have been doing this long enough. You, there's a certain vibe you hear from people when you're out hanging around. Certainly, cars people are coming to see the cars. So we've got the content, that's. That's number one. That's the most important thing. We can't have all these people coming without something to see. But I had a on that survey. Number two was food, of course, and this year I think we have seven to eight vendors and that's probably more food vendors than we've ever had.
Speaker 1:So it continues to grow.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the thing that I like the most of all, the things that go on. You know, we see new people and it's not, by the way, not the same cars every week. We see a lot of the same cars every week, but there's new registrations every week, and what I love to see is the grandpa is taking their grandkids up and down the street and pointing out the interiors or something in a car that they would have no clue. So it's, it's an educational thing as well. Not only is it just visual, but it's a visual education experience for a lot of people.
Speaker 1:And you both also have your own classic cars.
Speaker 3:We do Correct.
Speaker 1:You mentioned earlier the historic Henderson Auto Society. Tell us more about that.
Speaker 2:You know, danny brought up a good point about the grandparents with their grandchildren teaching them a little bit of history of the automobile. And when we set up the historic Henderson Auto Society, we did it to protect the event. It gave it some credibility. And there's some other things we can do grant writing and so forth but one of the criteria in becoming that nonprofit was we chose education, because that is what's happening here and there are certain times Denny will, he'll put his big brain to use and come up with trivia questions, and that's education.
Speaker 3:And I might add, if I can, about an experience that I think, of all the years that we've been doing this was the most enjoyable to me. Last year we had a teacher approach us from Hilltop Elementary School here in Henderson if we would make a presentation. So we got probably a dozen, 15 cars, starting with the Model T, t all the way up to a Tesla, and we told about each one. You know, for example, when we got to the 50s, the Finns and the Chrome and so on and so on, we got to the, the muscle cars, and we had a road runner and of course we asked these kids all standing around, what does the road runner do? And they all went beep, beep and afterwards when they, when we allowed them after our presentation to tour the cars, that poor guy almost burnt his horn out.
Speaker 3:But that was a super great experience and even the instructors, the teachers up there told us you know, we learned some things today, so we did some research on, for example, the Model T and then all the way up through the teens of 20s and 30s up to the present day, and that was a great educational experience.
Speaker 2:And that was a great example of Denny just putting it out there. We need some cars in these certain areas and we we reached out to our community and we had that many people respond to you and bring those vehicles.
Speaker 1:You mentioned that there's 18 of these throughout the summer, and just even doing one of them in a community is a big undertaking. Why so many?
Speaker 2:We wonder that now.
Speaker 3:When it's 100 degrees, you wonder why do we do this all the time? But the people want us and if they keep coming, you know, if you build it, they will come, and it seems like we need to do this for the community. I can't see us backing down, and we have experienced some weird things. You know, there was a time we've experienced flooding, when one, two and three other roads in Henderson were were covered and the only way they could come was from the west, and we still got 250 cars.
Speaker 2:Well, one thing it eliminated was the confusion of when is this event, and I think it's been over 10 years that we've been doing it every Tuesday, so now you simply say it's every Tuesday from the end of May through the mid September.
Speaker 1:So people know yeah, for people who have never come to the classic car rolling in Henderson, minnesota, why should they come?
Speaker 3:Well, first of all, you don't absolutely have to be a car nut. You know it's just. It's just kind of crazy to. You might see a car on the corner that's worth 200,000 and an old rat rod made out of a manure spreader is behind it. You know it's just true. It's just a variety of things. Of course, there's the food to eat, there's the chance to win door prizes, but it's just a great people experience. There's benches up and down Main Street, they're all full. Did you?
Speaker 2:hear that in the background, that laughter. That's it's the socializing really.
Speaker 3:And they sit in the park and visit there's. Some of these cars have hardly missed a roll in from the beginning and they've got to know a group of people. They park up here along the street and they just visit with each other. So it's food and fun and also it's the ambiance of Henderson's historic Main Street. You know our restored buildings, the businesses are open and they are thrilled to see the people coming. So it's, if you only come once, I think you're going to like coming to Anderson.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm excited to be here, so we get this interview out of the way early so I can enjoy the rest of the night. I'm really pleased to have been joined by Jeff Steinborn and Denny Graham of the historic Henderson Auto Society. Thanks for being our guests on the growing destinations podcast.
Speaker 3:We very much appreciate you having us. Thank you, thank you very much Appreciate it.
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