Monster Jam

About This Event

Monster Jam is ten-foot-tall trucks doing donuts, backflips, and car crushes for a weekend — pure kid-magnet spectacle that doesn't need a cultural hook to justify the trip, with three days of shows meaning there's almost always a slot that fits a Saturday-morning family schedule.

The whole sport traces back to one truck: Bigfoot, built in 1975 by St. Louis contractor Bob Chandler, who slapped oversized 48-inch tires on his own Ford F-250 to advertise his auto parts shop. Bigfoot performed the world's first monster truck car crush in 1981, and by 1982 it was booked at Michigan's Pontiac Silverdome — the beginning of monster trucks as a touring spectacle rather than a local novelty. Chandler never sold the Bigfoot brand into the modern Monster Jam series (now owned by Feld Entertainment), so the trucks running this weekend are a different lineage than the original, even though the whole genre exists because of it.

Worth knowing before you go: show times vary across the three days, and tickets start at $35 — check monsterjam.com for the exact schedule and pricing tiers.