Tamara Gruhot

If you love stunts, and maybe don't mind getting damp, head over to the Grandstand at the Steele County Free Fair today for two shows from ATV Big Air Tour.

In the 1920s an Owatonna businessman’s invention enhanced his family’s business and rerouted automobile history in the region. Sylvie Zamboni, son of Carlo Zamboni, and owner of the Zamboni Garage created what became known as the Zamboni boot...

Blacksmith Lou Groth, who performs blacksmithing demonstrations near Harvest and Heritage Halls during the Rice County Fair, shows us how he creates a spoon from a nail. Groth has been a blacksmith for about 14 years and said he got into it because he wanted to “try doing something the hard way...

Steve Groening recounts the KOBK news from July-August 1917. Hot topics include World War I draft registration and Owatonna’s Company I preparing for mobilization. Automobiles also were growing in popularity. Steele County had 1,335 cars as of May 1, 1917, and increase from 980 the previous year...

Check out the ceilings in the log cabin on the Rice County Historical Society grounds. The logs have been squared by hand with tools such as a broad ax and an adze. You can see the grooves left in the beams, and also some of the logs in the cabin’s corner, behind the bed...

Now on display at the Steele County Historical Society: a DeLorean DMC-12. While it doesn’t have a flux capacitor like the car made famous by the “Back to the Future” movies, and so cannot time travel, it does feature the classic stainless steel panels, gullwing doors and engine in the trunk...

Sue Garwood reminds us to look up for this display of Minnesota license plates. Donated by the Schreyer family, the earliest plate is from 1908 and is made of leather. The collection features plates from every year through 1965. New episodes featuring Rice and Steele county history are posted to the KDHL YouTube channel and kdhlradio...

Riverside Cemetery in Medford, one of the oldest cemeteries in Steele County, is the final resting place for many Civil War soldiers, including a cousin of Robert E. Lee, and members of the county’s founding families. Robyn Ladd introduces us to a few of them...

If you walk through the Rice County Historical Society’s Harvest and Heritage Halls, you may notice a display on household items, including six washing machines. They range from a scrub board and tub to hand-powered washing machines to an early electric machine to a gasoline-powered machine to a more “modern” 1930s-era machine...

The Steele County Historical Society’s Dan Moeckly tells us about Henry “Hank” Hartwig, who owned some of Owatonna’s first auto dealerships, and this automotive mechanic’s service coat. Hartwig, a lifelong Steele County resident, first operated Paige Motors, then H...