Bentleyville USA
Description
Bentleyville will be at Bayfront Festival Park Saturday, November 18 - Tuesday, December 26, 2017
Hours: Sun - Thurs 5 pm to 9 pm Fri - Sat 5 pm to 10 pm In 2001, Nathan Bentley first started decorating his home in Esko, MN for the Christmas season. For the next two years he continually added more lights to create a larger holiday light display; his home quickly became known as the “House with all of the lights in Esko.” In 2003 Nathan changed his light display from a “drive by” to a “walkthrough” with Santa Claus visiting on weekends.
Since Nathan was going overboard a friend sarcastically started to call it Bentleyville (referencing Dr. Seuss’s town of Whoville). The name caught on with visitors and in 2003 “Bentleyville Tour of Lights” was born.
During the summer of 2004, Nathan and his family moved from Esko, MN to rural Cloquet, MN to a larger home for their 4 children. With the new name of “Bentleyville” came a whole new vision for Nathan. To entice people to drive out into the country a larger and grander Christmas light display was being built. A 78’ x 24’ high entrance castle made of 45,000 lights was built to greet visitors. Over 500 illuminated snowflakes hung from trees on his wooded property. Dozens of light displays were created and new ones added each year. Live entertainment was added featuring area school groups and community musicians. Fire pits were added for people to gather around and roast marshmallows. Santa Claus was now a permanent guest every night at Bentleyville visiting with children and handing out a free winter hat and bag of cookies to all the young children visiting with Santa.
A “Cookie House” was built offering free cookies, coffee and apple cider to everyone visiting Bentleyville. All the walking paths were paved allowing it to be fully handicapped accessible. A Popcorn building was built to hand out free popcorn to the people as they strolled through the light show. A food and toy drive was started to collect items for the Salvation Army in Carlton County.
As the popularity of Bentleyville grew quickly so did traffic problems with the very limited parking available on a dead end country dirt road. The neighbors soon began to express their concerns that something needed to be done about the increased traffic congestion. After just two years and an estimated 35,000 people visiting, Nathan decided the only way to solve the traffic concerns was to build parking lots in nearby horse fields owned by area neighbors. Visitors would be bussed in by hiring nine 72 passenger school busses to transport visitors from two parking fields to the entrance of Bentleyville.
After just 5 years of hosting Bentleyville at his residences and transporting over 72,000 people by school bus, in 2008 Nathan thought it was a good time to take a year off and reevaluate how everything was working.
In the fall of 2008 Nathan received a phone call from Duluth City Mayor Don Ness’s Office inviting him to a meeting to discuss an invitation to host Bentleyville Tour of Lights at Bayfront Festival Park in Duluth, MN. Nathan thought the new location would be a good fit for Bentleyville and accepted the one year trial invitation.
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RECENT FACEBOOK POSTS
facebook.comWe are still taking hat design submissions! Get yours in today by emailing your design to Tim@bentleyvilleusa.org, post to our Facebook page or send it to us in a message! Good Luck!
2018 marks our 15th season and we are looking for a new hat design that definitely 'WOWs' our visitors! Each season, we ask our fans to design the new Santa Hat. The winning design will receive a prize package that contains gift cards to local businesses, an official 2018 Bentleyville hooded sweatshirt and 3 new Bentleyville Santa Hats made with your design! We will produce 25,000 hats with the winning design and give them to children 10 and under who visit with Santa. The hats must meet the following criteria: - Bentleyville needs to be easily visible on the hat - Must be a design that boys and girls can wear - Submissions must be received by Wednesday, January 31st and include artwork Below you can see the Bentleyville hats that were given out since 2010 and our youngest volunteer, Griffin E., posing with 2017's hat! Please post your design to our Facebook page or email them to tim@bentleyvilleusa.org Good Luck!
Bentleyville is looking for fresh NEW photos for our 2018 -15th Anniversary Brochure. If you have the rights to photos in the following categories and are willing to donate these photos to Bentleyville we would love for you to share them with us for possible use in the 2018 brochure. Photos needed: * Overview / Overhead Photo of the Park * People visiting with Santa and Mrs. Claus * People roasting marshmallows or popcorn * People getting on or off the train or bus. * Photos of the fireworks at BENTLEYVILLE. Photos need to be high resolution. Please message us on Facebook with them or email directly to Tim@bentleyvilleusa.org Thanks in advance for sharing with us.
A crane donated by Boldt Construction has arrived at Bayfront Park this morning in preparation for Local Iron Workers 512, Halvorlines, Boldt, Titan Rental and Sun Belt Rentals companies donating their equipment, people and resources to take down the Bentleyville 128’ tree Saturday morning beginning at 8:00 am. THANK YOU!!!
Time to Submit those Display Ideas! We heard many suggestion from visitors on what should be added to Bentleyville to make it more: festive, engaging, enchanting, magical, welcoming, etc. for our guests. Is Bentleyville missing something that you would like to see at our event? Then let us know! Display suggestions must be detailed and not be copyrighted. We are looking for: - Original Ideas - Family Traditions - MN Landmarks - Folklore - Fairy Tales - Other Unique Ideas Please let us know your ideas - you may find your idea alive at Bentleyville next time you visit!
Everything is wonderful at Bentleyville. Thank you to everyone.
Volunteers Needed!!! Come down to Bayfront Park today & tomorrow to help take down the displays or wrap up extension cords. It takes us 9 weeks with hundreds of volunteers to setup - so your help is needed to take everything down! We will be here today and tomorrow from 830 am - 4 pm. Lunch will be provided!
We are appreciative of being thanked for putting on Bentleyville, but what we really NEED is HELP taking down Bentleyville Saturday and Sunday 8:30 - 4:00 each day. There are inside jobs as well as outside. Just show up. We know it may be cold, but helping will warm you up. Please don’t just share this message on Facebook, please share your time with us. Please don’t assume someone else will help, those people are few. We NEED you. Thank you!!
INSIDE JOBS! We would appreciate your help in putting away Bentleyville. Just show up, today through Sunday. 8:30 - 4:00 every day. We are ready for you now. Thank you!
We need your help dismantling America's Largest Free Walk Through Lighting Display! Both indoor and outdoor jobs are available. All skill levels are welcome! No need to sign up in advance - just come down and lend a hand! Jobs include: wrapping extension cords, removing barricades, dismantling displays, picking up garbage, etc. Volunteers will be in Bayfront Park Thursday through Sunday from 8:30 am - 4pm Thank you for making Bentleyville's 2017 season a success!
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