Swan Lake Huckleberry Festival

White tents stand among the trees where the forest comes down to the shore of Swan Lake, near mile marker 72 on Montana Highway 83. On the second Saturday of August the Swan Lake Chamber & Community Club holds its Huckleberry Festival at the Swan Lake Day Use Park, the same ground it has used since 1981. In 2021 the booths opened at 9 a.m., and by 10 cars had filled the parking lot and lined the shoulders of the highway. Terry Olsen, who co-organizes the festival with his wife, Lesly, told the Seeley Swan Pathfinder that year that people come and go all day, so a count is hard to get. He put attendance at “easily” over 1,000. His one worry for that festival was smoke. “We have no control over the forest,” he said.

The village sits on the highway at the southern end of the lake, which the club gives as almost ten miles long and a mile wide. The listings do not all agree on where the festival sets up. A Bigfork Chamber of Commerce calendar entry for an August 8 festival, billed as the 45th year, placed it at the Swan Lake Trading Post & Campground. The club’s own page names the day-use park and announces the 45th annual festival for Saturday, August 14, 2027.

Pancakes at eight, pies before they are gone

The day starts with a huckleberry pancake breakfast at 8 a.m. In 2021 it cost $7 for pancakes, meat, juice and coffee. Troy Ehrman worked the grill with help from Sonny Mckenzie, and Terry Olsen reckoned they served around 500 breakfasts, which made the breakfast a large part of the day’s earnings. Volunteer Lyn Chambers-Bienvenue said Bigfork Harvest Foods and Ferndale Market have donated supplies for years. “We couldn’t do it without them,” she said.

The fire department supplies huckleberry pies for the baked goods sale. The club’s advice is to come early, because the pies sell out quickly. Search and rescue handles the ice cream, and a caption on the club’s photo page calls it “the best huckleberry ice cream ever.” In 2021 the volunteers at the Swan Mission Search and Rescue and Fire Department booth scooped almost without a break, and people walking through the grounds with full cups drew in the next customers. The ice cream sold out before the festival ended.

At 11 a.m. the huckleberry baking contest is judged in two classes, adults and children 12 and under. Each entry must use huckleberry somewhere in the recipe and come in at least three servings. In 2021 Cindy Love took in the entries that morning. “It’s just joy to look at all these creations,” Lesly Olsen said.

Lunch comes from food trucks and from Kathleen Moon, owner of the Laughing Horse Lodge, who runs the beer and wine garden in the afternoon and serves street tacos. The Bigfork Eagle also reported peach huckleberry pie at her stand. During the 2021 festival the beer tap quit. Someone answered a call for help and fixed it, and it was running again shortly afterward.

Fifty booths and a band by the water

The Arts and Crafts Fair draws more than 50 vendors by the club’s count, and 50 to 60 by the Pathfinder’s. They sell woodworking, jewelry, stained glass, knitted goods, metalwork, rock engravings, paintings, photography, textile art and pet accessories, along with Montana-made foods. Some take cards, but the organizers recommend bringing mostly cash.

The local country western band Silverado plays from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., and some listeners bring their own chairs. The two newspapers give slightly different accounts of the band’s history. The Eagle reported in 2021 that Silverado included two original members of the Ashley Creek Ramblers, who had played the festival for many years and broke up when bandleader Roy Wilhelm retired. The Pathfinder said the Ramblers had disbanded since COVID-19 and that one former member started Silverado. Between songs an emcee reads the raffle winners. The club’s photographs name the announcer as Norm. In 2021 his announcements carried across an almost windless day at the lake.

The silent auction and raffles run through the afternoon. Local restaurants and stores have usually donated gift certificates and goods. In 2021, after the strain of COVID-19 on those businesses, club members bought the certificates themselves to put up for auction and raffle.

Pastor Chuck Cushman leads the children’s games: water gun fights, a water balloon toss and volleyball. Other children swim or throw rocks into the lake. In 2021 the Eagle noted dogs of every size on the grounds, from hounds and retrievers to toy poodles, and children pulled around in wagons while their parents browsed. The club’s photographs also show a grizzly bear presentation by the Forest Service.

The festival sells a T-shirt with a new design each year, and people collect them. A quilt sewn from old festival shirts hangs in the Swan Lake Chamber and Community Club. Wayne Whitney designed several of the festival posters over the years. Calendar listings have given the hours as 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Volunteers told the Pathfinder in 2021 that the festival now closes an hour earlier, at 3 p.m., because the crowd begins to thin around 2.

A fire department fundraiser, 1981

Swan Lake began in the early 1900s as a community of loggers cutting timber for lumber and for the ties of the Great Northern Railroad. The club gives three explanations for the name: the trumpeter swans that once lived on the lake, an early resident named Emmett Swan, or the mountains to the east.

A 1981 article in the Bigfork Eagle covered the first festival. Its early organizers included Laurel and Joyce Lape, Janice Chambers, Dolores Kimball, and Garnet and Dutch Dahmer. According to the Pathfinder, the festival was started to raise money for the Swan Lake Volunteer Fire Department and also helped fund the search and rescue team. Over time the money shifted toward general upkeep of the town. The Eagle describes it as a fundraiser for the Swan Lake Community Center, which the Women’s Club led the effort to build in the 1940s. The center stands next to the Fire Hall and hosts bridge, poker and the Fireman’s Ball, held each February. The club says festival proceeds pay for the center’s maintenance. They have also paid for an electric speed sign and a retired patrol cruiser parked along the highway.

The same families and volunteers keep the festival running. Ken Myers manages the booth layout, Pastor Cushman directs parking, and the Dringman family helps set up the night before. Lesly Olsen credits the date for the festival’s luck with the weather. “Whoever picked that date was a genius because we have been blessed every year,” she said. Volunteer Helen Whitney remembers one exception, a sudden downpour just after the silent auction tables were set out. “I was literally lying on the table covering everything,” she said.

Pig roasts and sofa rafts

The early festivals held pig roasts. “[They] would stay up all night basting the pig,” Whitney said. There were raft races too, but they died out because they were too complicated to set up. Whitney described the raft her son Mark entered: he built it from an old pontoon boat, then loaded it with discarded sofas and recliners, large speakers and an umbrella.