Great Montana Sheep Drive and Labor Day Celebration

At about four in the afternoon on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, a flock of sheep comes down North Division Street in Reed Point, Montana. Spectators stand behind an orange line on both sides. At the 38th Annual Great Montana Sheep Drive and Labor Day Celebration, held September 6, 2026, there were about 500 animals. Reed Point lies along I-90 between Big Timber and Columbus. Montana Free Press puts the town at about 180 people, and the Stillwater County News in 2023 put it at about 100. The printed itinerary handed to visitors warns that “sheep are in charge and at large.”

Four o’clock on North Division Street

Area ranchers take turns supplying the flock. Allen Laubach, who ranches west of Big Timber and has attended every drive since the first, told Montana Free Press that the 2026 sheep were his. He hauled them into downtown, and at about 4 p.m. residents and visitors began herding them down the street. In its preview of the day, the Stillwater County News had credited the sheep to Kevin Anderson of the Big Timber area. The paper also calls the route Main Street.

“We had a little trouble getting the sheep started to come down the street this year, but a lot of people just jumped in, got behind them and held them so they didn’t run back,” Laubach said. A few years earlier the animals broke through the crowd and crossed the railroad tracks north of town. Laubach and some other “old timers” set up a new corral nearby and hauled them back. “You just never know how it’s going to go,” he said.

Organizers ask spectators to leave dogs and other pets at home, because the sheep don’t recognize them and they can spook the flock. Before the run, the sheep wait in a pen near the street. A banner stretches across the street, framed by the town’s grain elevators. In 2025 the Stillwater County News described the crowds along the route as ten deep.

Pancakes to the street dance

The day starts at 7 a.m. with a pancake breakfast at the fire hall. In 2026 the Columbus Rural Fire District hosted it until 10. After breakfast come wool spinning and sheep-shearing demonstrations. In 2026 Anna Phipps sheared, and people in the crowd reached in to feel the wool.

The parade steps off at 12:30 p.m. The 2025 county paper called it the “biggest little parade in Montana,” and Montana’s Yellowstone Country, the regional tourism office, says it has been written up as the world’s “Biggest Small Town Parade.” Riders on the floats throw candy. The 2026 theme honored the nation’s 250th anniversary, which matched the event’s “Ewe.S.A.” logo. Diana Hahn was grand marshal. She is one of the founders and, according to the Stillwater County News, the last of them still involved. On the day, she sat for a portrait in the Waterhole Saloon.

The rest of the program fills the street. There is a classic car show, a raffle for a $500 Walmart gift card, and roughly 55 vendors, along with children’s rides. The live auction sells goods donated by local businesses, and in 2026 Rick Young & Sons Auctioneers called it. A silent auction table stood inside the depot. Children played in a corral built of hay bales near the Community Club and competed in a round bale rolling contest. The log sawing contest uses a 100-year-old crosscut saw, the same one at every contest since 1980. Yellowstone Country calls the event a log sawing calcutta. New for 2026 were stick horse races for children throughout the day and an adult division in the pie-eating contest.

The egg toss returned in 2025, organized by Sig Smith and Precious Lambs Daycare, and it was on the 2026 program as well. It harks back to the earliest version of the celebration. “I haven’t experienced it and I’ve been here 10 years,” organizer Audrey Ott said when it came back.

The street dance runs from 6 to 10 p.m. In 2026 Zechariah Peabody played, under the sponsorship of the Waterhole Saloon. In 2023 the band was the local group Triggered.

Estimates of the crowd vary. Jerry Friend, a co-organizer, put modern attendance at 3,000 to 5,000 in 2023. Yellowstone Country says the crowds are nearing 8,000. “We have people from Germany who plan vacations around the sheep drive,” Friend said.

Bachelor Daze and Letitgo Incorporated

The Waterhole Saloon comes into the story early. Chris and Diana Hahn built it in 1975. A 2025 Stillwater County News account, which spells her name Diane, says that Chris and Diane Hahn, Dave Parker, Ken Belcher and Irv Ostrum started Bachelor Daze in 1980 out of conversations at the Waterhole. The paper’s 2026 preview traces the celebration to a 1980s bachelor auction featuring Floyd Fergeson. Yellowstone Country describes Bachelor Daze as a family day to raise money for local projects and admits it is not sure why it had that name.

The cattle drive came in 1989, the centennial of Montana’s statehood. The Great Montana Centennial Cattle Drive went from Roundup to Billings over six days. Montana Free Press, citing the Billings Gazette, counts more than 2,800 cattle, about 3,300 horses, 200 wagons and 100 drovers over 60 miles. Yellowstone Country gives 2,400 people, 200 wagons and 2,800 cattle over 50 miles, and adds that the drive raised money for a scholarship fund.

As Yellowstone Country tells it, a group of Reed Point locals were sitting around drinking and joking, and worrying a little, that the cattle drive would kill their own event. Their answer was a sheep drive. Laubach calls the first one a “spoof.” Friend recalls that a company called Latigo ran the cattle drive, so the sheep drive was billed as the work of Letitgo Incorporated. He laughed when he told it.

The press took up the story, and newspapers called to ask for press passes. According to the 2025 county paper, the town expected maybe 5,000 people. The Montana Highway Patrol estimated the crowd at nearly 14,000, and Yellowstone Country says nearly all of the town’s 98 residents turned out to help. The Stillwater County News called it “The #1 Centennial Event in the State.” Friend sold goods as a vendor that first year. He has been a co-organizer every year since 1990 and is also the Stillwater County Treasurer.

The flock and the picnic table

Laubach told Montana Free Press that not much has changed over 38 years. The one loss he named is the sheep events. As the number of sheep ranchers has declined, the sheepdog trials and the lamb cookout have dropped away. “Sweet Grass County and Big Timber were the wool capital of the world at one time,” he said. The paper notes that the national sheep herd has fallen 90 percent over the last 80 years. The 2024 drive set the record at 500 sheep, but organizers say it has grown harder to find ranchers willing to bring their flocks.

The organizers have grown fewer as well. The 2025 committee had six active members, who met at a picnic table outside the Community Club building across from the Waterhole Saloon. Norma Ullery has been involved since 1994, “longer than Kuincy Strecker has been alive,” she said of a fellow member. Her daughter Jessica moved back from Park City, about 30 minutes east, was talked into joining, and became the club’s secretary. “If we don’t do it, who else will?” Audrey Ott asked at the August 12, 2025 meeting.

The Reed Point Community Club puts on the drive as its fundraiser. In 2023 the proceeds came to between $5,000 and $7,000 after expenses. By the 2025 count, the drive had raised more than $250,000 over 36 years. That money has paid for the library expansion, fire department equipment, Christmas lights, a defibrillator, picnic tables, and the well in the cemetery. The club also delivers candy to the school on Valentine’s Day and sponsors a Santa at Christmas. Its current project is the old train depot in Jerry Friend Park, which once served as the fire hall and which the club is renovating as a public gathering space.

Laubach lived in Reed Point with his family for 25 years. “They treated my kids very well, the school and the Reed Point community,” he said, and he calls bringing his sheep “kind of a payback deal.” He expects to do it again next year, though he is not sure how many more drives he has in him. “As long as somebody is willing to do the work to get the sheep there, I think it’s going to carry on,” he said. “Why? I don’t know. But people just come and spend the day and watch the sheep run down the street and back up again and call it good.”