A Vintage Junket: Shady Hollow Flea Market

I consider myself "lucky" to have secured a building at the Shady Hollow Flea Market , 5 miles south of Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. I will be setting up at this market for my 4th year this spring. The Flea Market starts on Memorial Day and runs until Labor Day ever year. The history of the market, from the DL paper, is as follows:

Shady Hollow has been serving Detroit Lakes for 42 years, many of which have been under the ownership of Ardy Hanson. First as a vendor and then as part owner, Hanson said she's been part of the flea market for all but 12 of those 42 years.
Started by Julia Nustad and nine other women from the Fargo-Moorehead area, they would only allow 10 vendors in at a time. Now there averages 145 vendors on opening weekend, then 75 to 80 on the other summer Sundays.
Vendors sell anything from jewelry to clothing, art work to food, antiques to furniture, books to home decor, flowers to toys.
Hanson got involved when she and partner Monte Jones set up a booth to sell collectibles. From there they ran the market for six years for Julia and then purchased the land and business when Julia was ready for retirement.
The land, long before it was a flea market, was a vegetable farm. Then Highway 59 was built cutting the property in half.
The thing that makes this market so unique is the fact that there are 25 small buildings, leased out by the season to vendors. There are additional acres that are available for people to pull in with cars, pickups and trailers and set up Sunday morning. The market has several lunch stands so no one goes hungry. If you are in the area from end of May to the first of Sept, be sure and put it on your must stop list.
[ Since this article was published the market has been sold to Chad Stenerson.]