By Sunday afternoon at Hinterland, many attendees were trudging through mud and puddle-filled trenches left by tire tracks after days of heavy rainfall. The air was filled with the musty scent of wet fields as sludge clung to shoes and mud splashed onto legs. Smart people had the foresight to pack boots to make this journey while others skated across in their flip flops and sandals, arms extended in a desperate attempt to balance. The farmland parking lots had become muddy pools affording cars little traction.
“I’ll never forget the rain, that’s for sure,” said Josh Hewitt, one of the festival organizers who plays a key part in navigating the logistics of putting on a multi-day festival. “I got up Monday morning after the festival at 5:30 a.m. and went immediately to the skid loader, grabbed a tow strap that we had and a chain and just started pulling vehicles out on my own."
Hewitt wasn’t the only festival organizer who had major parking issues before, during or after an event this summer. The Hinterland grounds got an inch of rain the day before the gates opened to pre-soak the ground, and then it continued to rain on and off all weekend, except for one glorious day of sunshine Saturday.
Other festivals were also hit by heavy rain, including Lollapalooza which took place the same weekend as Hinterland, and later in August a hurricane tore through theBurning Man grounds, dumping rainfall on the typically dry desert site.
After storms tear through properties, there's always restoration to be done, especially when they happen during a major event where a lot of people are parking and camping. Some festivals plan for and make land management a part of their ethos. Take for example Harmony Park in Southern Minnesota, where many Iowans go during the summer for festivals; its a well-cared for oak tree forest. Camp Euforiaand Grey Area Music Festivalin Lone Tree have been held on private farms, and the owners of those properties have put years of work into their land. Some, however, don't. Remember that the dairy farmer who owned the land Woodstock was held on received a $50,000 settlement after the storied festival for the near total destruction of his fields.
Outside of the stage, and the bands, and the lights and the food, music festivals are made possible by huge plots of land. All of this had me curious about what happens behind the scenes; especially in Iowa where land stewardship is a thing.
The FAQ on the Hinterlands
The property Hinterland occupies includes the 100-acre Avenue of the Saints Amphitheater, approximately 170 acres to the east and south owned by Hinterland festival owner and founder Sam Summers, plus an additional 20 acres on the west side of the amphitheater that is rented for the duration of the festival. All of this land aside from the amphitheater is actively utilized for agricultural production in the festival’s off season, most of it in hay.
“I bought a bunch of the land around [the amphitheater],” Summers said. “We put everything in hay so that we can cut it and have it be parking or camping.”
In addition to the amphitheater, many of the fields surrounding Hinterland, a more than 16,000 person festival, appeared destroyed at the end of the 2024 event, with deep tracks left by vehicles and equipment alike. As organizers and crews uninstalled fences, tents, and portable buildings, Summers had his eyes set on property management goals, beginning with reseeding the ampitheatre. And with a rodeo scheduled at the amphitheater on September 3, he and his team needed to get right to work.
“I have a hydroseeder, which is like one of those things you see on the highway, those big tanks. And I put grass seed in that,” Summers said. “I don’t know that that’s on my responsibility list but I want a nice amphitheater next year so we already do that.”
Hinterland attendees saw a lot more heavy equipment this year as crews drove in mulch and gravel to combat the worst of the mud. Hewitt and his crews began laying the gravel and mulch after rain soaked the grounds before the festival opened.
“The main areas where we had stuff tearing up was where people turned their vehicles, so it’s not the entire fields that are an issue,” Summers said.
If you were wondering: yes, the organizers had to go back through and pull up all the mulch and gravel they put down to help cars get traction in the field.
Building the festival
Even before the first Hinterland attendees stepped onto the grounds of the Avenue of the Saints Amphitheater, organizers had been preparing all year for them. Physical preparations of the amphitheater began a month in advance, with equipment arriving by the second week of July.
The amphitheater is located just outside of St. Charles city limits, a town with a population of less than 700 people. Director of Madison County Emergency Management and Homeland Security Diogenes Ayala estimated over 16,000 attendees at this year’s Hinterland, which doubled the entire county population for the three-day event.
“If you have ten people or you have 10,000 people, it’s still kind of the same protocols,” Ayala said. Even so, it’s not an everyday occurrence for Ayala to receive emergency calls from people stuck in traffic or stuck in the mud.
“The calls that we got, we’d just tell people, the fact that, you know, be mindful that you’re all trying to leave a concert at the same time,” Ayala said. “If there was an emergency, we’d be down there.”
Rick Schaffer has worked as the Saint Charles Fire Department Chief since long before the first Hinterland in 2015. Each year, his department gives festival organizers input and assists with fielding questions about resources available. He emphasized that his department is not alone in ensuring festival goers’ safety. His team was out in force helping concert goers get unstuck from the mud on Sunday at the event.
“In a town our size, in an area that we cover, it wouldn’t take a very large event, whether it be fire or EMS, to tax our services,” Schaffer said. “So we do a little bit more work with the surrounding areas to be prepared for that.”
Most people who work with First Fleet Concerts and Sam Summers on Hinterland speak highly of the work being done to make the festival run well and make improvements year over year.
“Sam and his crew are very, very good and very conscientious of bringing it back to what it was prior to them, but they always try to make it better,” said Renatta Bolen, Avenue of the Saints Amphitheater marketing director. Most of their events use a portion of the amphitheater’s land, with Hinterland as the exception. That bodes well for the long term future of the festival, especially given the planning necessary to support crowds of festival goers rain or shine. Summers acknowledged the volatility of the weather as compared to previous years. The fest had outstanding weather for the first several years but last year saw record-setting heat and this year lots of rain.
“It’s almost like we’re going through a climate crisis here,” Summers laughed.
The climate may be outside of any festival’s control, but the land and the lineup are not. Summers and his team are now starting to get ready for 2024.
“I always go for things I really want to have,” Summers said. “We’re definitely very cognizant of who we put with who and try to build lineups that are complementary.”
This story was funded by a grant from Prairie Meadows.
