A TIME EXISTED when ballrooms centered weekend entertainment and socializing across southern Minnesota: The Monterey Ballroom in Owatonna, no longer a dance hall, but an event center. The Kato Ballroom in Mankato, today primarily a place for banquets, wedding receptions and meetings. The Gibbon Ballroom in Gibbon, once the site of Polka Days, now closed. George’s Ballroom in New Ulm, demolished. The Blue Moon Ballroom in Marshall, destroyed in a 1981 fire. Ballrooms, as they once were in their heyday, are mostly non-existent or altered in usage.
But just across the border along Interstate 35 in northern Iowa, an historic ballroom remains open and going strong. That’s the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, an 84-mile or one hour and 15-minute drive from my community of Faribault. I’ve been there. Not to dance. But to tour the venue that marked the final performance site for Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson on February 2, 1959.
The next morning, a chartered plane carrying the trio crashed in a field shortly after take off from the Mason City Municipal Airport, killing the musicians and pilot, Roger Peterson. February 3, 1959, was, according to singer and songwriter Don McClean, “the day the music died.” The tragedy is forever immortalized in McClean’s 1971 “American Pie,” a lengthy song I know well given I was a teen of the 70s.
Ten years have passed since I visited the Surf Ballroom. But nearly every January, I mentally revisit that experience of walking onto the wooden floor of the iconic ballroom and immersing myself in yesteryear. It’s not that I’m a big Buddy Holly fan or even into music all that much. But I can appreciate the significance of this place in rock ‘n roll history.
The three musicians, plus Dion and the Belmonts, Frankie Sardo, Waylon Jennings, Tommy Allsup and Carl Bunch, were on a 24-day Winter Dance Party tour through Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa when they so tragically died. They had been crisscrossing the Midwest in a tour bus, playing in big cities like Milwaukee, Green Bay, St. Paul and Duluth, but also in smaller towns like Montevideo and Mankato in southern Minnesota. That Mankato performance was January 25 at the Kato Ballroom. Following the February 2 gig in Clear Lake, Holly decided to charter a small plane rather than endure the 364-mile bus ride to Moorhead for the next stop on the tour. That decision proved fatal.
The Winter Dance Party continues to this day at the Surf Ballroom as a way to honor the rock ‘n roll legends. This year’s celebration is January 30 – February 1. Closer to home, the Paradise Center for the Arts in Faribault is hosting “Buddy Holly: Oh Boy!” at 7:30 p.m. Friday, January 31. The next day, Saturday, February 1, the show will be at the State Street Theater in New Ulm at 7 p.m. This is a re-staging of Holly’s Winter Dance Party.
Whether you’re a fan of Buddy Holly or not, I think it’s important to recognize the significance he held in American rock ‘n roll culture. Music, in many ways, is like an historical account of life. It carries messages, entertains, connects us to memories and events, and touches us emotionally. And when the music died on February 3, 1959, the nation cried.
FYI: The Surf Ballroom/Museum is open year-round Monday – Friday with additional times during the summer. Always check ahead before visiting as the ballroom can be closed if there’s a rental or concert. Additional related sites are Three Stars Plaza near the Surf and the crash site, about five miles distant.
© Copyright 2025 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Minnesota Prairie Roots 
That’s so cool that you were able to visit that ballroom. They were a big deal in the past and truly somewhere for people to enjoy the weekend with dance and music. My parents told me about a place they used to go dancing and it is now part of a city park in Detroit, but the ballroom portion no longer exists. You’re so right about music being a historical record of sorts.
My parents actually met at a dance, but I can’t recall the name of the ballroom. How wonderful that the space once taken by that Detroit dance hall is a park now.
It was always a beautiful park that still exists in Detroit and so beautiful, called Belle Isle, but they no longer have big band night and dancing it’s long in the past
Understood. What a memorable place.
Audrey, your posts like this frequently connect me so gently and vividly to the time and place I am from—Scarville, IA (not far from Mason City) where our family lived until I was 6 or so. I remember how dark, how expansively dark, it was when we’d be driving (7 of us in a black Ford Galaxy 500) somewhere on those country roads, maybe an occasional single light bulb in a passing farm house window. And then we’d pass by the Golden Bubble Ballroom with its exterior covered with giant neon circles radiating blue and gold light. So beautiful and so foreign to anything I knew in my 5 year-old world. I think to me it seemed no less amazing than would a long dark space flight passing the rings of Saturn. At that age I didn’t even wonder about the music inside. The magnificent container was enough for me.
Your comment is a beautiful piece of descriptive writing. I feel like I’m in the Galaxy with you and your family, traveling that country road. And then, the beautiful Golden Bubble Ballroom appears. I can picture it all because of your detail-rich story. Thank you for sharing this memory of an Iowa ballroom.
I want to visit the Surf Ballroom some day. Thanks for the reminder/memory.
You would enjoy the Surf and Clear Lake. It’s not that far away.
This was such a tragic end to so many talented musicians. I’m linking an article you might be interested in reading about the Waylon and the others that didn’t get on the plane.
https://people.com/music/buddy-holly-the-day-the-music-died-feb-3-american-pie/
Thanks for that link. I have not read that. And, yes, a tragedy.
Ten years flies by! Gosh, we loved going to The Surf for concerts and miss that venue. We saw some really great shows there and the crash site is a must see as well. So glad you were able to visit.
We enjoyed our visit with you also in Mason City. Time flies…