Frenchtown Days

Noon downtown, dancing at the Alcan

On Saturday, July 11, 2026, the vendors and games of Frenchtown Days ran in downtown Frenchtown from noon to 6:30 in the evening. The Frenchtown Fire Department sat over a dunk tank to raise money for itself and ran a 50/50 raffle. There were bobbing for apples, a watermelon eating contest, and dangling doughnuts, along with corn hole, ladder ball, axe throwing, and face painting. A beer garden stood beside a mocktail corner. Food trucks served the crowd. There were pet adoptions, a table for Bikers Against Bullies, veteran awareness performances, and free child ID kits. Admission was free.

Frenchtown lies about 16 miles northwest of Missoula on the historic Mullan Road, in the Clark Fork River valley. Visit Montana says American Indians called the valley qua elth, meaning state of tranquility. The festival is produced by Vivid Marketing & Design, an advertising agency for small businesses that creates and produces the Frenchtown Events community gatherings. Tia Stagg is listed among the hosts, with Mike’s Alcan Bar & Grill, a plumbing outfit, a limousine service, a building supply company, two realtors, and a custom apparel shop.

The agency’s notice for the 2026 day said: “when the sun starts to set... the music turns up!” From 7 to 10 p.m. the band Open4Business played the free street dance at the Alcan, on Beckwith Street.

A puppy parade and a burned house

The first Frenchtown Days was held on July 29, 2023. Derek Joseph of KPAX reported a day “packed with live music, competitions, vendors and even a puppy parade for dogs without homes.” The band was No Excuses.

On the Thursday before, a house belonging to Nick and Hickory Monreal had burned down, and some residents used the festival to collect for them. “So we’re trying to replace some clothing and some shoes and get school supplies and cash donations because they have to completely start over with their house,” Samantha Brant told the station. She went on: “Frenchtown’s an amazing community when somebody in the community needs something the entire town shows up and we do what it takes to make sure those people have everything that they need.”

King Ranch and back

For the second Frenchtown Days, on Saturday, July 13, 2024, the organizers moved the date up “a couple of weeks to help with the heat.” They also moved the festival to the King Ranch Golf Course on Mullan Road, which offered more parking and more room for children’s games. The program listed more than 40 vendors, fishing tournaments, tug of war, three-legged and sack races, doughnut eating, karaoke contests, and a summer clothing exchange for children of all sizes. Bands played at the golf course until 6 p.m. The event page then sent people back into town: “Keeping with Frenchtown tradition, we will have the street dance at the Alcan at 6:30!” Vivid Marketing and Design and The Herbal Counter were named as sponsors.

By 2026 the daytime program had returned downtown, and the dance stayed at the Alcan.

St. John’s Day and the society of 1885

The town had a summer festival long before this one. Accounts of its founding differ. The 1985 National Register nomination for St. John the Baptist Church says that by 1860 several French-speaking immigrants from Quebec and eastern Canada had founded the settlement. Wikipedia credits two French Canadians, Jean-Baptiste Ducharme and Louis Brown, who came inland with their Métis families around 1858. A post office opened in 1868. After Louis Barrette found gold in Cedar Creek northwest of town in 1869, about 3,000 prospectors flooded the area, and four new hotels went up in 1870.

By 1864 the French-Canadian Catholics had a log church. Father Tremblay arrived in the summer of 1884 as the town’s first secular priest and found that the town had outgrown it. Work on a new church began that June. A ship’s carpenter named Lugar Forast is credited as the primary builder, with help from other local men. St. John the Baptist Catholic Church was dedicated on August 21, 1884, and Tremblay preached in French in conjunction with St. John’s Day. A bell cast in New York was added in 1885, inscribed in French with a dedication to the church in Frenchtown.

In May 1885 the adult men of the parish organized the St. John the Baptist Society, each paying dues of “une piastre.” Its ten articles were written in French. The first pledged the maintenance of their nationality and religion under the U.S. flag. The second promised that members would stay out of the saloons during Mass, on pain of a fine. The fourth set June 24 as the patron saint’s day.

According to the nomination, hundreds of people from Frenchtown, Missoula, Butte, and other western Montana towns came for St. John’s Day. The day began with a high mass in the decorated church. Speeches, games, races, and dances filled the afternoon, followed by a dinner, a ball, and fireworks after dusk. Lena Boyer Lucier, interviewed in 1976 by the Frenchtown Historical Society, remembered the special train that brought people from Butte for it. Her interview is one of 22 that society members, Merle Johnston among them, recorded in 1975 and 1976 for the book Frenchtown Valley Footprints. Several of those interviewees spoke of the celebration and of the parents and grandparents who came down from Canada. The holiday was observed regularly until the 1960s, and the nomination noted that local citizens had recently renewed it.

Inside the church, the woodwork was repainted in 1959, for the 75th anniversary, in off-white, red, and light and sky blue to commemorate the French flag. The repainting restored the original scheme, which had been covered over with white. A French flag hung inside the church until 1984.