The Gopher Count is an annual community festival held in Viola, Minnesota, United States. Since 1874, the event has been on the third Thursday in June.
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The Gopher Count is an annual community festival held in Viola, Minnesota, United States. Since 1874, the event has been on the third Thursday in June. Some the events include a parade, a tractor show, a nail-driving contest (women only), a pie-eating contest, fireworks, and dancing.
The festival is named for the practice of collecting a bounty on killed gophers, still paid by the township as of 2009, though other aspects of the festival are more actively promoted.
Since 2024, Gopher Count's official Facebook page states that Gopher Count is "the oldest celebration in Minnesota and the longest consecutive celebration in the US!" However, both claims are false. Stiftungsfest, which began in 1861, is Minnesota's oldest celebration and is thirteen years older than Gopher Count.
The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Gopher Count”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.
Gopher Count is Community festival on Viola, Minnesota, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. 1
The source record links this tradition to 1 external register, which can be verified through the citation. 1