January 23, 2024:

“It is not about how fast you go; It is about how long you go fast.”   

   ~Ryan Thomson

 A new event had been organized by the St. Paul, Minnesota, Winter Carnival, being held on Sunday, January 25, 1964, in St. Paul’s Phalen Park. The competition pitted the contemporary four-cycle powered workhorse snowmobiles against new, lighter sports machines over a twisting half-mile course along the shores of Lake Phalen. Forty contestants showed up to tackle the rolling, rambling course. Among the contestants were Clayton Brandt and Donald Hedlund, both Polaris Industries employees.

Clayton Brandt

 Donald Hedlund

As the story goes, Hedlund unloaded his machine and started pulling on the rope. It did not start. Thus the Sno-Traveler sat right where it had been unloaded from the pickup for the rest of the day. 

Clayton’s Sno-Traveler started. (He had permission from the Winter Carnival officials to take a practice run around the course.) According to an interview years later, Brandt stated, “I got to the bottom of this one hill, and I couldn’t get up the next, so I turned around and was going back out the way I’d come in. I could not get up that hill, either, so I dragged the machine behind some bushes and stood there, watching the race. That was my first taste of competition!” 

The following year proved to be a much better experience for the Polaris race enthusiasts.

The 1965-1966 season started a racing frenzy at Polaris Industries. 

In January 1965, several Polaris employees, Randy Hites, and Edson Brandt, traveled to St. Paul, Minnesota, entering the 3-mile St. Paul Winter Carnival Second Annual Snowmobile Competition at Phalen Park.

Randy Hites won driving his Polaris Mustang to the winner’s circle. In the center is the winner, Randy Hites, to the right of Randy is Edson Brandt, runner-up. 

In February Allan Hetteen, Edson Brandt and Randy Hites traveled to Rhinelander, Wisconsin participating in the “Hodag” Cross-Country Snowmobile Marathon. There were 110 machines entered with only 22 sleds finishing the race. In the Hodag Class 20 for the 16.5 horsepower machines, Randy Hites won in 1:45:29. Teammate Edson Brandt was second. As Bill Vint wrote in Warriors of Winter, “Allan was happy with Polaris’ victory but upset with his race drivers. Allan had crashed and instead of stopping to help him, Hites and Brandt raced right past, leaving the company president stranded in the woods.” 

Randy Hites

  Edson Brandt

Allan Hetteen

 Allan believed the hometown of Polaris Industries should hold a winter festival and race event, highlighting the snowmobiles they were producing. He contacted members of a volunteer men’s club known as the Roseau Lions Club. Through the efforts of Allan, other Polaris employees, along with the Roseau Lions volunteers, and community leaders, a two-day event in Roseau, MN called the Roseau Lions International Winter Festival- February 19-20, 1965, was established. 

This was the first international snow-machine race in history. “Over fifty competitors were entered in the cross-country race Saturday to kick off the Winter Festival sponsored by the Roseau Lions.” according to an article in the Roseau Times-Region newspaper.

Polaris President Allan Hetteen posted a memo company-wide, inviting employees, and/or their spouses, children, and their friends to participate in the 1965 Winter Festival in Roseau, Minnesota, a weekend celebration of Slalom and Oval snowmobile racing. Mr. Hetteen offered the use of a snowmobile to each family to enjoy the snowmobile race weekend and also have the opportunity to participate in the winter festival events. 

This photo was taken on Sunday, February 20, 1965, showing all the winners of the weekend competition.

Front row: Left to right: Robert Eastman, Gerry Reese, Louis Knochenmus; Second row: Marlys Brandt, Eleanor Johnson, Tim Hetteen, Greg Grahn, Rodney Johnson; Back row: Jean Grahn, Allan Hetteen, Don Erickson, Roger Skime, Don Hedlund

  All the drivers pictured were Polaris employees and/or family members driving Polaris snowmobiles except for Roger Skime on an Arctic Cat. Skime and Ken Beito had driven Arctic Cat snowmobiles from Thief River Falls, Minnesota, sixty miles from Roseau, to race at the weekend event. 

The last weekend of February 1965 at the Canadian Power Toboggan Championships in Beausejour, Manitoba, one week after the Roseau Winter Festival, there were some notable victories by northern Minnesota snowmobile enthusiasts.

 Roseau County Sheriff Paul Knochenmus on a Polaris won a special 16-mile endurance race. Polaris welder Bob Eastman placed second. 

Eastman had raced competitively for the first time the prior week at the 1965 Winter Festival in Roseau, Minnesota, realizing he loved the racing. The Beausejour event was the second race in which he had competed. He soon began testing snowmobiles and racing more and welding less on the production line.

Polaris President Allan Hetteen won the most noteworthy victory in a thrilling 10-mile cross-country Open Class. Hetteen drove a sled that was the first factory snowmobile specifically built for racing. The Mustang model

featured a front-engine 4-stroke Mercury Marine, liquid-cooled motor.

The day of the race Hetteen was not feeling well. Allan’s wife Gertie, said, “He was deathly ill with a flu and fever while he was racing.” She remembered. “He was going to pull over and stop, but he had such a huge lead he could not bring himself to give up. He hung on for the win, but the photos of the Champion show him looking gaunt and pale as a ghost, but he tried to smile!”

In late March, Roseau Truck Driver, Jon Miller, driving a semi-load of snowmobiles for Polaris Industries to California, decided to mix business with some racing pleasure. 

Jon was the winner in three classes at the 1965 snowmobile races held in Mammoth Lake, California.

An article in the company’s newsletter highlighted one of the drivers at the end of the race season.

 Randy Hites finished 1965 with a winning record! The Mustang he is kneeling on indicates the victories he had won in the race circuit.

 In the March 1965 Polaris Post edition of the company’s newsletter, Allan Hetteen stated, “Polaris is willing to come out in any kind of a contest, speed, endurance, obstacle course races, or what have you, and show the public what their machines can do.”

Each weekend, snowmobile racing was drawing media attention and large crowds in Canada and the United States. Racing appeared in a multitude of towns holding a race for the weekend.

These events were filled with some great competition, networking, comparisons, getting ideas from one another, and then planning for the next weekend to win a race and make some money!

People from all occupations and demographics, together, outside, on a winter weekend!

A race was held on Sunday, a sled was bought on Monday! 

Snowmobile races seemed to be popping up wherever the snow fell. Polaris embraced the trend toward speed with the introduction of a new, zippy model.

 “Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.”

~Vince Lombardi, 1957

Researched by Carmen Przekwas, References: Roseau County Historical Society, Warriors of Winter, The Legend of Polaris, Mike Hetteen, Polaris Post newsletters, Roseau Times Region, Allan and Gertie Hetteen Archives,  Minnesota Historical Society, All Rights Reserved