Sun River Valley Fun Day

The day starts at 7:30 a.m. in front of the Lions Hall on Main Street in Simms, where runners sign up for the Bev-O Memorial Fun Run. The Choteau Acantha calls the course three miles. The Fun Day’s own Facebook page calls it “3ish.” The race goes off at 8, and runners get a T-shirt and, the Facebook page says, a free breakfast. The Sun River Valley Lions Club runs the whole day. Simms, in Cascade County, holds it on the second Saturday in August. The 2026 Fun Day, the 27th, fell on August 8 under the theme “Happy 250th Birthday America.”

Pancakes, a parade, and the Lions Hall

The pancake breakfast runs from 8 to 10 in the Lions Hall. The Lions spend the money on utilities, insurance, and the other bills that keep the lights on in the hall the rest of the year. Silent auction tables fill the same room until 1:30. The rubber ducks for the afternoon race are sold there too, along with 50/50 tickets. In the week before the 2026 Fun Day, the Facebook page passed along: “Ruth says you can rent 2 ducks for $5 in honor of the 250th Anniversary of the United States!”

At 10 the vendor fair opens on the lot at Main and Clark Street, across from the Simms High School lawn. Craftspeople, artists, and other sellers set up there. The local American Legion, the Sun River Valley Historical Society, and the food bank keep information booths. Children go to the school lawn for a bouncy house and face painting, which run until 2.

The parade lines up at 10:30 at the Curtiss Service Station on MT-200 and moves down Main Street at 11. The Fun Day page lists the entries as “cool cars, horses, semis, floats, fire trucks and class reunions.” The grand marshals in 2026 were three couples: Jim and Linda Rushton, John and Diana Warner, and Ed and Sharon Wheeler.

Lunch follows in the Lions Hall from 11:30 to 1:30. The Tumbleweed Bar and Grill catered it in 2026. Up the street, the Simms Methodist Church holds a pie social of homemade pies from 11:30 to 2. In 2026 Richard William played drums from noon to 12:30. Ax throwing for adults and children ran from noon to 2, an event new that year. At 12:30 the live auction starts across the street from the Lions Hall. Its items come from craftspeople and businesses in the valley and in Augusta, Cascade, Choteau, Fairfield, and Great Falls. The 50/50 winner is drawn when the auction closes, and a ticket holder must be present to win.

Ducks in the ditch north of the Mennonite Church

From 1 to 3 the adults pitch horseshoes for prizes while children play a cornhole tournament with popsicles and ice cream. At 2 the rubber ducks go into the ditch north of the Mennonite Church and race. The sources disagree on when the adults play cornhole. The Acantha’s 2026 schedule put the adult tournament at the Lions Hall from 6 to 9 p.m., with a $6 burger meal deal. A Fun Day post that same week said adults were “on tap from 3-5p.” The 2025 schedule had them at 3 to 5.

From 2 to 5 p.m. the historic Fort Shaw holds an open house, timed to the Fun Day. The 2025 edition had one as well.

A barn dance at Fort Shaw

The 2026 Fun Day ran past dark for the first time, with a Valley Barn Dance from 7 to 10 p.m. at the 2U Event Center, 13313 MT-200 in Fort Shaw. The Fun Day page places the center between the Fort Shaw historical sign and the Sun River Valley Community Center, which it notes is also called the Senior Center. Shakedown County played. The Acantha listed dinner for purchase at 6. The Facebook page promised “Cowboy Cocktails” for dinner from 6:30, along with “wonderful conversation and the dance floor.”

The weekend also starts early. On Thursday, August 6, 2026, the Sun River Methodist Church held an old-fashioned tent meeting with sing-along old-time gospel songs and a message from Trevor McGurran. Months before that, on June 13, the Lions held a Fun Night at the hall with food and games of chance, and they add its take to the Fun Day proceeds.

Twenty-seven years on Main Street

The Fairfield Sun Times called the Fun Day “a community celebration for the Sun River Valley and neighboring communities” in 2021, its 22nd year. The valley holds four small rural towns, Simms, Fort Shaw, Sun River, and Vaughn, which share two elementary schools, a middle school, and a high school. Their rural surroundings reach into Cascade, Lewis and Clark, and Teton counties. The Acantha reports that Fun Day money goes to local organizations and emergency services in those four towns and in Augusta, Fairfield, Cascade, and Choteau. In 2021 the Sun Times also named youth and senior programs among the recipients.

Each year’s Fun Day keeps the same shape and changes some of its contents. On August 14, 2021, the parade had a “South of the Border” theme, and the Missouri River Musicians gave a free concert. There were tennis contests, and the Sun Times called the cornhole and horseshoe tournaments “ever popular.” The Simms High School chapter of Future Farmers of America put on a kids’ stick rodeo and a petting zoo for the first time. The Cozy Corner Cafe served lunch, and the Methodist pie social stood “just up the street,” as it still does. The 26th Fun Day, on August 9, 2025, had the theme “Our Roots Run Deep.” It added a Firemen’s Equipment Rodeo and music by Bob Antonich and Friends, and the Log Cabin Cafe catered lunch.

The Lions Hall, at the center of all of it, is owned by the Lions Club. The Sun River Valley Lions Community Foundation describes it as one of the largest public gathering places in the valley. The club is a 501(c)(4) organization, so donors cannot deduct gifts toward repairing and remodeling the hall. Some foundations and companies willing to help would give only to a 501(c)(3). The Community Foundation was first proposed to solve that problem, and it now serves other small valley groups in the same position. Work on the hall was under way in 2026. In April the Fun Day page invited people at a Simms Fort Shaw Volunteer Fire Department pancake supper to “check out the newest work on the Lions Hall.” In July a cornhole night raised money for the renovation.

The foundation’s president, Dee Dee Rains, is one of the Fun Day’s listed contacts. Ruth Mortag and Dave Yarger are the others. Rains was born and raised on a ranch west of Simms and attended Simms schools. She taught at Simms High and Middle schools from 1978 to 2019 and was an All-Around Cowgirl in high school and college. She later raised Birdtail ranch horses and two sons. Her foundation biography says she enjoys her cows and piano playing, and that “any day she rides her horse is a good day.”