Absarokee Days

Absarokee Days begins with a pancake breakfast at the fire hall, served at 7 a.m. for the 2026 festival. Vendors open their booths soon after along Woodard Avenue, the downtown street of a valley town below the Beartooth foothills, on Montana Highway 78 between Red Lodge and Columbus. The booths sell local crafts and food. Food trucks run all day, and a kids zone keeps going through the afternoon. Vendors named on the organizers’ page in 2026 included Jim’s Woodcrafts, Mary’s Mountain Makes, Countryside Photography, Bearstreet Homemade Projects, Big Sky Bling Boutique and Gringos. The Absarokee Area Merchants Association runs the day. It falls on the last Saturday in July, which was July 25 in 2026, and carries into Sunday morning.

The parade at eleven

The parade starts downtown at 11 a.m. The organizers set a theme for the 2026 parade, “celebrating our local heritage,” and suggested rafting, fly fishing, hiking, Boosters, foundations and horses. Their call for entries welcomed classic cars, vintage tractors, custom-built floats, pack mules and marching groups. In 2024 the floats came from around town, among them the Absarokee Lending Library and Agape Gifts and More, and a line of sports cars followed. In 2025 Clara Borland, a longtime resident active in community work, rode in the procession.

The Stillwater County News called the Cobblestone Kazoo Band the most surprising and silliest entry of 2024. It is a large group of kazoo players led by Stacy Stimpson. That year they played and sang the Absarokee School fight song as they marched, and Brett Hollingsworth kept time behind them on drums. In 2025 the band paid tribute to Ozzy Osbourne, who had died that summer, by playing “Iron Man.” “We had the crowd rockin’,” Stimpson said.

Kactus Jack after dark

A stage on Woodard Avenue carries live music from early afternoon into the night. In 2024 the local musician Charlie Denison opened from 1 to 4:30 p.m. with Chris Hildebrant of Lewistown on saxophone and keyboards. Their set mixed originals and covers in blues, folk, rock, country and Americana, Steve Miller’s “The Joker” among them. In 2025 Perry Thompson made his debut as the opening act. The Webb Family Band played from 1 to 4 p.m. in 2026.

Kactus Jack takes the stage in the evening. The paper describes the band as a country and rock trio that plays classic rock standards. Kevin Kemp plays lead guitar and sings, Doug Knoche plays bass and sings, and Brett Hollingsworth of Columbus drums and sings lead. In 2024 Hollingsworth backed the kazoo band in the morning, ran sound for the opening act in the afternoon, and played with Kactus Jack at night. He sang Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days” while people danced in the street. By the 2025 festival he was in remission from cancer and back behind the kit. In 2026 the band played from 5 to 10 p.m. and closed with Cheap Trick’s “I Want You to Want Me,” which brought the crowd to the dance floor. During a set break in 2024, Kemp spoke to Denison about living in Absarokee. “You’re one of the lucky ones,” he said.

The cornhole tournament runs at 3 p.m. at the Chrome Bar, where players sign up. The fee in 2026 was $15 a person.

Sunday service and a memorial tournament

On Sunday morning several of the town’s congregations hold an All-Church service together. In 2026 it was held outdoors at 10 a.m. In 2024 a praise and worship group drawn from Grace Fellowship and Absarokee Evangelical led the singing, and Pastor Justin Wayland of Grace Fellowship preached.

A softball tournament runs alongside the festival weekend. The Stillwater County Chamber of Commerce lists a co-ed tournament among the planned activities. The Forest Dana Memorial Softball Tournament held its 12th edition alongside Absarokee Days in 2025, and the 13th annual tournament ran with the 2026 festival. It honors Forest Dana, whom the paper calls the “Duke of Absarokee.” Dana was killed in 2013. Jed (“Bubba”) Studiner organizes the tournament, which draws teams from the surrounding area, from Billings and from farther off. In 2025 a team called “Down By 2” took first place and the 307 Bar & Grill team took second.

The weekend also works as a reunion. The chamber lists class reunions among its activities, and the paper has called it an unofficial high school reunion. In 2024 Denison and his wife, Kari, were one of many households hosting family. His mother-in-law, Kathy Holmes Albertson, grew up on a ranch outside Fishtail and found old friends in the crowd. His brother-in-law, Louie Albertson, was an Absarokee state champion running back in the late ‘80s and later taught in the area. He ran into friends, colleagues and former students.

A hot Saturday and a festival rebuilding

The 2026 festival had a new organizer and its hottest weather on record. Trina Stevens, who owns the Chrome Bar, organized the 2024 and 2025 festivals. One 2024 article gives her name as Katrina. “We just try to gather people in our small town and show them a good time,” she said. Debbie Skiles, representing the merchants association, took over for 2026 and hoped to restore the event’s earlier size. “Years ago, Absarokee Days was phenomenal,” she said. “After COVID it started dropping off. We want to bring it back to what it was before.” In mid-July she had about 30 vendors and 10 to 15 parade entries, and she hoped to double the parade. In 2024, by comparison, more than 45 vendors had lined Woodard Avenue.

On July 25 the temperature broke records, and the crowds were thinner than in years past. The Senior Center opened its doors so people could get out of the heat. “You can control everything but the weather,” Skiles said. The next day the organizers posted their thanks for a turnout on “possibly the hottest day ever” and added, “Next year we are putting in an order for cooler weather.”

A log hotel on Crow land

The town’s own beginnings are better recorded than the festival’s. The ground under Woodard Avenue was once part of the Crow Reservation, and homesteading in Stillwater County waited on the ceding of Crow lands. S.T. Simonson arrived in 1892 to wait for the land to open. He staked 160 acres and built the first building, a log hotel. He later put a post office on his ranch and named it Absarokee, a word the chamber says he believed meant “our people.” Montana’s Yellowstone Country gives the name as coming from the Apsáalooke, the Crow people. Simonson platted his homestead as a town site in 1905 and began selling lots. The land later passed to P.H. Hawkins, who gave the town the ground now called Hawkins Park, where the log house that served as Absarokee’s first school still stands.

The Sandstone School went up in the summer of 1910. The Cobblestone High School followed in 1917, built of rocks that residents hauled from the Rosebud River. Both buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places. Absarokee has never incorporated, and by the chamber’s count it has about 1,150 residents at an elevation of 4,044 feet.