Case Study

Chequamegon Fat Tire Festival

Festival, Non-Motorized Vehicles

This mountain biking event held in Cable and Hayward, Wisconsin, began in 1983 as a race with just 27 riders. Today the Fat Tire Festival includes several races with a management-established maximum of 2,500 riders, as well as a number of other family-oriented events during a three-day period. Registration for racers is in such demand that management has allotted the space to participants by a lottery of entries. The Fat Tire Festival attributes much of its early promotional success to the mailing of a pre- and post-race tabloid newspaper, "Fat Tracks." The race itself uses portions of the Birkebeiner (or "Birkie") Trail, as well as other logging and fire roads, and is a linear race rather than a circuit, taking participants from Cable to Hayward.

A postcard from the Chequamegon Fat Tire Festival.

Events at the festival include a warm-up event, a Pasta Feast, product displays, awards presentations, and free family activities such as the Klunker Bike Toss and a Children's Bicycle Rodeo. The festival fills the area's hotel rooms and keeps people enjoying the trails and scenery of the Chequamegon National Forest all weekend. The race was modeled after the 7,500-participant American Birkebeiner, North America's largest cross-country skiing race, and uses part of this course as its path. TREK, Telemark Resort, and several other local businesses sponsor the Fat Tire Festival. Members of the community, many of whom are with volunteer organizations (churches, schools, and clubs), staff the race. Participants and spectators mainly come from large cities in the region like Minneapolis/St. Paul, Madison, Milwaukee, and Chicago.