We're really lucky that we have a great downtown that we get to highlight with these historic shows and all of these folks who come month after month to show their cars and be with us.”

Jen Fox

For 20 years, classic cars have rolled into downtown Hastings, filling the streets with chrome, color and plenty of stories. What began as a way to bring people downtown has grown into a regular community gathering, and the Hastings Downtown Business Association marked that history with a 20th anniversary celebration of the Historic Hastings Car Shows.
The anniversary event mixed the familiar sights of hundreds of classic vehicles with live music, local history and a short program recognizing the people who helped get the shows started. The Downtown Business Association and its volunteer committee continue to organize the events, which have evolved over two decades while keeping their connection to downtown Hastings at the center.
“Today is the 20th anniversary of the historic Hastings car shows, and we're honoring it with a short little program at 1:30, where we're gonna just talk about where we've been and where we want to go,” Jen Fox said.
The anniversary program included Tasha Nelson of the Busted Nut and Tony Behrens, who Fox described as two of the founding members of the car shows 20 years ago. Their participation gave the celebration a chance to look back at how the shows began and recognize some of the people who helped establish what has become a downtown tradition.
“We're really lucky that we have a great downtown that we get to highlight with these historic shows and all of these folks who come month after month to show their cars and be with us,” Fox said.
The day's schedule went beyond the cars. Gordy Pearson provided live music from noon to 3 p.m., while Mark Gelhar handled the DJ duties, something that has become nearly as much a tradition as the vehicles themselves.
Fox said Gelhar's involvement represents one of the constants through the show's history.
“The least amount of change I will say is that Mark Gelhar has been DJing every single car show for the last 20 years,” Fox said.
Spencer Johnson also brought local history into the celebration, giving presentations tied to Hastings and its development. His first presentation focused on the city's relationship with the Mississippi River, while a later program focused on the history of commerce. The anniversary schedule included a history presentation from 11:30 a.m. to noon, followed later in the afternoon by another history presentation from 3 to 3:30 p.m.
Johnson's Mississippi River presentation stretched well beyond Hastings itself, tracing the role of the river through exploration, settlement and transportation before narrowing the focus to the community that eventually developed along its banks.
He discussed the long history of Indigenous peoples along the river and the different names used for it before European exploration. Johnson also described the explorers who traveled the Mississippi and the role the river played in transportation and trade.
As his presentation moved closer to Hastings, Johnson talked about the natural features that made the area attractive as a town site. River access was only part of the equation. The area also offered relatively level land, nearby water power, freshwater lakes and springs, all of which made the location useful for settlement and commerce.
Johnson also traced Hastings' transportation history through the bridges that connected the city across the Mississippi. Before bridges, people relied on ferries to cross the river. The spiral bridge later became a defining piece of Hastings infrastructure, designed in part to route traffic directly into the downtown business district.
That connection between transportation and downtown commerce fit naturally with a celebration centered on cars and downtown businesses. Johnson noted that business interests were involved in constructing the spiral bridge, with the goal of bringing traffic into the commercial district.
His historical tour continued through the blue bridge familiar to generations of Hastings residents and eventually to the current bridge, tying the city's changing transportation system to the Mississippi River that helped shape Hastings in the first place.
While the history presentations looked back much farther than the car shows' 20 years, the modern event has also changed substantially since its beginning.
One of the most noticeable changes has been the move to Sunday afternoons. Fox said the decision was driven largely by the realities of organizing an event that requires streets to be closed and a relatively small group of volunteers to handle the work.
“We moved it to Sundays because it's frankly a lot less volunteer intensive to shut down the streets,” Fox said. “We also get to have it during the day, which we really like. It's a really good group of folks who come on Sunday afternoons.”
The shows had previously been associated with Saturdays, and Fox acknowledged that some people would prefer a return to that schedule. For the current volunteer crew, however, Sundays have proven to be a more manageable option.
“We have a very very small volunteer committee, and we don't get a lot of organic volunteers to help us, so this works for what we have and what our resources are,” Fox said.
Fox added that people who would like to see Saturday shows return can volunteer to help, noting that organizers cannot put the events together alone.
The nature of the show itself has changed as well. Rather than functioning mainly as a traditional cruise-in, the current format encourages participants to park downtown and stay for much of the afternoon. That creates a different atmosphere, with visitors able to walk among the cars, visit businesses, listen to music and get something to eat without the vehicle lineup constantly changing.
Fox estimated that roughly 300 cars can be downtown over the course of a Sunday. Some may come and go during the event, but many remain parked for most of the day.
That consistency has helped the car show become more of a monthly downtown festival than simply a place for enthusiasts to drive in, show a vehicle and leave.
Food trucks have become another part of that transformation. Fox said they were not part of the earlier versions of the event, while today's shows can include several, including vendors from Hastings.
“We didn't have all these food trucks before, and some of them are local,” Fox said. “About three of them are from Hastings, which is super fun.”
The larger mix of attractions reflects what organizers hope the car shows can offer. The vehicles remain the centerpiece, but music, food, history and the downtown setting give people reasons to stay longer and make an afternoon of the visit.
The 20th anniversary program in Oliver's Grove was scheduled from 1:30 to 1:45 p.m., providing a formal moment in the middle of the day's activities to recognize the milestone.
Fox said the program would look at the people who founded the shows, what the Downtown Business Association was like at the time and some of the founding members who are no longer living. The focus was not simply on nostalgia, but on acknowledging the groundwork that allowed later volunteers to build upon the original idea.
“We're really grateful for what they gave us and how we're leading it forward,” Fox said.
Howard Shoffner of St. Croix Collision has taken a major role in keeping the present-day shows moving. Fox described him as the person who is “kind of running the ship.” Shoffner is a member of the Downtown Business Association and part of the volunteer effort behind the events.
That volunteer component remains essential even as the shows have grown.
Twenty years of car shows have meant changes in schedules, vendors, volunteers and the way the cars themselves are displayed. What has remained is the basic idea of bringing people into downtown Hastings and giving them a reason to spend time together.
For the Downtown Business Association, the anniversary offered a chance to recognize the people who started the tradition while also looking toward what comes next.
For spectators, there were hundreds of cars to examine. For longtime Hastings residents, there were memories of downtown, the river and the bridges that helped shape the community. For organizers, there was also the satisfaction of seeing an event started two decades ago still filling the streets.
And after 20 years, one familiar voice was still providing the soundtrack, Mark Gelhar was back behind the DJ equipment, just as he has been since the beginning.