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The Tombstone Trail is one of the longest running, best attended car club events in Minnesota. All you need is 2 people, a car, a pencil, a flashlight and a sense of adventure. We'll take you on a scavenger hunt around rural Minnesota that you will not soon forget. Be prepared to visit some strange places!
This is a historic site for the event. We have some history of the event here, including past event results and reports. For information on upcoming events, please refer to our Facebook page.
History of the Tombstone Trail
In the 1970's the Sports Car Club of Rochester, MN put on a night rally every Halloween called The Great Pumpkin Rally. It was a TSD-style rally with a twist: Every few miles you had to stop at a cemetery and answer a question in the dark. It was really a lot of fun!
But it wasn't very good as car rallies go. I ran it in 1976 and 1977 and thoroughly loved it. In '76, we got lost, then spent way too long at the first cemetery and ended up at the first checkpoint about a half hour late. I told the checkpoint worker, Dave Fellman, "We aren't doing very well, are we?" He replied, "You're the second car here!"
In 1977, the event seemed hastily-designed, and everyone was getting lost. There was lots of whining at the endpoint, and finally the rallymaster had had enough. He quit on the spot, and the Tombstone Trail was born. I realized that the event wasn't a car rally. It was all about the cemeteries. The first Tombstone Trail ran in 1978 with an emphasis on the time spent finding interesting things in cemeteries, the more remote, the better. The event grew year after year until we finally had to start capping the entries.
2017 was my 40th and last Tombstone Trail. That year Liz Westberg, the daughter of two of my friends who had been running the event since she was born, agreed to be my assistant. She helped me set up and run the event, and in 2018 Liz took over as rallymaster with me as her assistant. Since 2019, Liz has run the event by herself, leaving my wife Vicki and myself free to compete for the first time since the Great Pumpkin! Liz is very creative and does a great job coming up with new ideas every year.
This site is now just a landing page for those who know to look here for it. The events are now run from our Facebook page, and I hope you'll join us there for the next Tombstone Trail!
Links
- Here are complete results from some of the previous Tombstone Trails.
- Here's the archive of reports from past events.
- See some of the past winners of the Tombstone Trail.
- See some examples of previous events.
- Are you seeded? Check out the seeding list for the next Tombstone Trail.
- Here's the current entry list.
- Check out this cool Tombstone Trail Video produced by a crazy person.
- Here's another.