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Behind the scenes at the bentleyville tour of lights
Bentleyville "Tour of Lights" is America's largest free walk through lighting display, located in Duluth, Minnesota, that runs from November 18 to December 26, 2017. Bentleyville is set up in Bayfront Festival Park. Bentleyville has volunteers work year round to set up this beautiful attraction.
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Bentleyville tour of lights 2014 tree
Description
Bentleyville is a free light display in Duluth, Minnesota. It is a non-profit organization open every single day from November 18 through December 26, 2017 from 5:00 pm to 9:00 pm on weekdays, and 5:00 pm to 10:00 pm on Fridays and Saturdays. It takes at least half an hour to walk through, depending on the weather and how fast you want to walk through it, and complimentary hot cocoa, cookies, popcorn and marshmallows are available to all guests. There are 15 different fire pits that you can stop at to warm up about halfway through the lights. Kids are also able to stop and visit Santa through December 23rd, if they would like. All children 10 and under will receive a new knit hat and bag of cookies from Santa.
Bentleyville is also the official drop off site for new unwrapped toys and nonperishable food items for the Salvation Army. Food and toys donated at Bentleyville are distributed to 7 communities: Duluth, Cloquet, Virginia, Grand Rapids, Hibbing, and International Falls, MN, as well as Superior, WI.
History
Nathan Bentley first decorated his home with lights in Esko, Minnesota in 2001. He added more and more lights for the next two years to make his display bigger every year, eventually Bentley’s house was known as “the house with all of the lights in Esko.” By 2003, Bentley transformed his house from a drive by to a walk through, Santa even visited on the weekends. One of Bentley’s friends eventually started referring to his house as Bentleyville (a play on words from Dr. Seuss’s “Whoville.” Bentleyville “Tour of lights” was born. In 2004, the Bentley’s moved from Esko to Cloquet, Minnesota. To get people and the usual visitors to come out to see it, Nathan built a larger and brighter display. He built a 78’ x 24’entrance made with 45,000 lights to greet people. There was over 500 lit up snowflakes hung from trees all over his property, dozens of displays were created and many were added every year. School groups and community musicians were added to add live entertainment. Fire pits were put in for visitors to gather around and warm up and even roast marshmallows, Santa also showed up every night as a permanent guest. Kids who came to visit Santa got a free winter hat and a bag of cookies. Eventually there was a building built for free cookies, coffee and apple cider that became eventually known as “The Cookie House” with a “Popcorn House” eventually added for visitors to enjoy free popcorn while walking through the lights.
Move to Duluth
The popularity of Bentleyville grew and so did the traffic. The Bentleys lived on a dead end country road so there wasn’t much room to park. After two years and 35,000 visitors, Bentley decided he needed to build parking lots in fields nearby with buses bringing the visitors to the entrance. In 2008, with 5 years of hosting Bentleyville at his houses, Bentley took a year off to think about how everything was working and to make it better. In the fall, the Duluth City Mayor, Don Ness, called Bentley asking if he would bring Bentleyville to Bayfront Park in Duluth, Minnesota for a year trial. Ness thought Bayfront Park was a perfect fit for Bentleyville. Bentley asked his original team members to organize the Christmas light show. He needed 600 volunteers and 10 weeks to help set up.
Opening day
On Friday, November 27, 2009 Bentleyville turned on its millions of lights for thousands of visitors for the first time in Bayfront Park. There was over 150,000 visitors that came to enjoy the sounds and lights of winter.
Expansion
On January 8, 2010 Bentleyville announced that it had decided to return to Bayfront Park for the next three years. Those three years helped with a lot of expansion in Bentleyville with adding the famous 128 foot lit up, animated tree as the main piece, right in the center of Bentleyville. Every year more and more displays were added, in 2011 Dino Land, a gift shop, more light tunnels, heaters in the line for Santa Claus, and a new home for Mrs. Claus was added. In 2012, Santa sky dived into Bentleyville on opening night, visitors welcomed Thomas the Tank Engine in the displays and the attendance made it to over 206,000 people.