Darby Strawberry Days

Main Street Park runs along Highway 93 at 106 S. Main, with the library, town hall and shops at its edges, playground equipment, and a gazebo. On the third Saturday of July the Darby Rural Fire Department takes it over for the Strawberry Festival, which the department calls its biggest fundraiser of the year. The 2026 edition ran Saturday, July 18, from 5 to 8:30 p.m. People stood in line for strawberry shortcake with ice cream, served that evening by students from Trapper Creek Job Corps. Local musicians Mike and Tari Conroy played, and a girl from the community came up on stage with them to sing “You Are My Sunshine.” A couple danced. Others sat at tables filling out raffle tickets.

The dunk tank and the bunker gear

Volunteer firefighters worked Main Street with a boot for donations, the department’s “Fill the Boot” collection. At one end of the grounds a firefighter sat over a dunk tank while a girl collected balls for her turn. Members laid out bunker gear for anyone who wanted to look — pants, flash hoods, jackets — and the extrication equipment bought with the previous year’s festival proceeds stood on display beside it. Money from the 2026 festival was going toward new bunker gear; the department’s event listing also named future substation needs, equipment upgrades, firefighter training and replacement of protective gear. Supporter merchandise was for sale. During the evening the department presented awards to its own members, and one photograph from the night shows firefighters holding awards alongside a man they had pulled out of trouble earlier in the year. Military members with the Innovative Readiness Training Program, then working in the Darby area, joined the festival activities.

The department’s own account of the day, posted the following morning, listed what had gone wrong first: “We had a busy night prior, a little weather rolled in before the event, and the humidity made it feel more like a Southern summer than a Montana evening. Despite it all, you showed up.” Raffle prizes went unclaimed by some winners; president Neal Elder had called them, and he sat at the fire station on North Main the following Tuesday from 5 to 8 p.m. so they could come get their items. The Friday before the festival the department holds its annual open house at the hall, trucks washed and the floors cleaned for visitors.

1940, 1954, or 1958

Among the 2026 guests was the daughter of one of the women who started the thing. “The Strawberry Festival began in 1958, started by a dedicated group of women, including Dorothy Davis, Edna Zilla, and Bing DaVebber, who wanted to bring the community together,” the department wrote.

Other tellings put it earlier. In July 2017 Fire Chief Chad Harrell told the Ravalli Republic the festival had been happening since 1940, and the paper’s headline that summer counted 77 years. In 2021 firefighter Weston Jones, then 26 years on the force, said the fire department was founded in 1954 and the festival began not long after. What nobody disputes is the date on the calendar. In 2017, when Darby’s Logger Days moved to the same weekend, Harrell kept his ground: “The Strawberry Festival always happens on the third Saturday in July. Logger Days changed their date but we chose to keep our tradition.”

Harrell’s 2017 festival ran 5 to 8 p.m. in the park across from Mr. T’s Convenience Store. Firp Redman, the bluegrass musician of 20 years, had left, and a band called Tin Cup came up from Conner to replace him. Instead of buying berries at the store, the department hired caterer Connie Gallagher, who owned the Darby Mercantile, “so everything will be fresh, homemade and local.” No fire trucks came to the park that year — parking was tight, and a newly ordered truck had not arrived. Harrell wanted the crew unoccupied: “It seems they are too busy during the event usually and we want them to be able to mingle.” Raffle tickets sold at the Bitterroot Community Federal Credit Union, at Darby Espresso, and at the gate. Jimmy Harrison of the Double H Custom Hat Company donated a certificate for a custom hat. Jerry Hinman Woodworking, run by a retired firefighter, contributed a deacon’s bench, as he had for years. Farmers State Bank put up a $500 gift certificate and the credit union a $200 one.

The log cabin quilt

The main prize in 2017 was a large quilt from the Stitch-n-Time quilting group, designed by Meredith Johnson and Brooke Adams and long-arm quilted by Carole Vining. Firefighter Ty Lumley built the rack it hung on, and Johnson helped set up the display, which circulated through Darby for weeks before the festival so everyone could see it. The pattern was log cabin. Quilter Paula Nelson explained the choice: “We are celebrating Darby’s history in the timber industry — the beautiful forest as well as the logging, recreation and log home industry.” She added the second reason. “We offered it to the Fire Department in remembrance of firefighter Mike Stark who passed away recently and who valued quilts and got our group making quilts for them a few years ago.”

Micheal Robert Stark, born June 5, 1954 in Deadwood, South Dakota, taught art, social studies and history at Darby Public Schools for 25 years and retired in 2009. He was a member of the Darby Volunteer Fire Department for 18 years, a rookie in the summer of 2000 when 450 square miles of the Bitterroot burned, and still on active duty when he died on June 2, 2017. His obituary records that he “was dedicated to the success of the Strawberry Festival Fund Raiser to assist the Darby Fire Department.”

A folding table and twenty people

The 2020 festival went online. July 2021 brought the first in-person one back: Mike Conroy, Tim Ezzell and Tari Conroy on the stage, cotton candy, raffle tickets at a dollar each or six for five, prizes that included strawberries, shortcakes and fishing trips. The berries came from People’s Market in Darby; other donations arrived from small businesses in town, from Sula and Victor, and, volunteer firefighter Jereme Feather said, from someone in Texas. About twenty people had turned up by the five o’clock start, and Jones guessed the evening would run three or four hours.

“As a volunteer service, we don’t get what the paid departments get,” Feather said. “Our chief always finds a way to make the money stretch, but this community support is so important.” Jones put it shorter: “We are very fortunate to live in a very giving community.”