The concept for the Haunted Woods was started by a group of volunteers, the high school drama and theater clubs and member of the city staff. It was behind the high school in Carroll’s Woods. It was originally put on over a couple of night and on Halloween nights, due to its popularity.

But in 1991 on Halloween night we had the now famous Halloween Blizzard, which dumped over 41” of wet snow in 2 days. Thus canceling the Haunted Woods and destroying many of the props used to put this production on.

The community and the schools Halloween Party was always in the high school commons area with games and prizes for everyone that attended. The Haunted Woods as was outside. After the blizzard had stopped and everyone was digging out from the snow, the props that were salvageable were stored in a semi-trailer behind city hall until 2001.

The games continued at the high school and later moved to the community center where they continued for many years. It wasn't the same without the trail. The Haunted Woods and the Halloween Party were held on Halloween, but numbers declined after the blizzard due to kids wanting to go trick or treating in their own neighborhoods.

In 2001 a group of citizens decided to give the Haunted Woods another chance, but it would be scaled back. That year they had less than 300 people show up at Central Park with only the Rosemount Area Seniors giving out candy from the shelter. They only had a few props from the semi-trailer that they pulled out.

By 2002 the Halloween Committee renamed the Haunted Woods to the Haunted Woods Trail (as it's known now) did more advertising but did not know if they would even get 300 people to show up. When the final total came in that night they found 933 showed up to an event that had been away for so long.

In 2003 the Rosemount Halloween Committee reorganized and decided to have a booth at Leprechaun Days just to make the public more aware of this city event. We had a couple of fundraisers and raised some money to make a few more props. We expected only 1,300 people but were excited when over 1600 people showed up.

In 2004 more props were made and several businesses in town wanted to come down and have a spot on the trail. We had 1,922 in attendance. Also added a new entrance, more scenes and expanded the cemetery.

In 2005 we bought a new sound system, had another fundraiser, made more props, had more businesses work the trail and purchased some blow-up figures and brought in 2,461 people to this event.

In 2006 brought the purchase of more blow-ups and some new props. Repainting the pirate ship and the pirates with brighter paint so it shows up better at night. We extended the trail around the west hockey rink, which helped with crowd control, and we had over 2,200 people in attendance.

2007 - 25th Anniversary. This year we added a new Haunted House Prop, along with a Giant Pumpkin on the ampitheater stage. We had a total of 2,650 in attendance. That is a new record. The weather was in the upper 30's to low 40's and very little wind. The highlight was when the full Harvest moon came over the hill and shone down on the park. We had also collected over 400 lbs of food for Second Harvest Food Shelf.