Morning-after remnants. Beer cans and six-pack cardboard remained at the dead-end head of Beaver Creek Road after deputies routed 300 partiers north of ELba in the early early morning of August 4. Inexplicable is somebdy’s underwear atop a twig that survived the fire. The gate beyond this bonfire blocks off access to a state wildlife management area. There were, in fact, two bonfires at the turn-around. Image: Steve Lunde
Countermeasures foil Ridgeway beer-a-palooza
WINONA, Minn. – Score one for Winona County Sheriff Ron Ganrude. Ears to the ground, his agents picked up a tip that another massive drive-to beer bash was in the works near Ridgeway and headed it off. It was the first law-enforcement success to combat a series of large-scale parties at remote rural sites in recent months in Fillmore, Olmsted and Winona counties. The latest previous bash, on August 3 into the next morning, with 300 mostly drunk participants, was a mile up a narrow dirt hunters’ trail in the Beaver Creek coulee in far northwest Winona County. The Ridgeway bash would have been at another secluded site, this off Interstate 90 but hidden by woods. Ganrude said his staff planted messages online that cops would be watching. Also, a nearby property owner cooperated to thwart the gathering. A semi-truck was parked across the only access trail. Deputies patrolled the area, Ganrude said. Nobody showed. Even so, Ganrude said, the organizer of the bashes has proven impossible to identify. Clearly a party site was scouted beforehand, but the invitation spread through online webs that so far have prevented tracing the originator. There appears to be no commercial motive. Ganrude said the multi-county scope of the bashes had made interception difficult. At Beaver Creek, he noted, only a few partiers were from Winona County. Some had driven 70 miles to get there.
Ganrude. Sheriff since 2018. Thirty-eight years with deoartment. Earlier chief deputy. Grew up in neighboring Houston County.
Problematic parties
Participants follow social media directions to drive to the sites. Three or four hours later they doive out drunk on trails that are hard to navigate even in daylight. Also: The party bonfires put fields and woods at risk. There have been fights and injuries. Somebody at Beaver Creek brandished a gun, apparently in a drunken but nonetheless scary gesture.