Special Occasions

Anytime is a great time in Ovando, Montana, but several times a year something wonderfully different happens. A special celebration is had, and everybody around Ovando turns up to participate.

Old West Christmas Fest -- Held during the Fridays and Saturdays following Thanksgiving, this annual event gets bigger and better each year. Mix handcrafted items for sale, soul warming foods, and horse-drawn wagon rides, with cold winter days, a downtown filled with Christmas lights, and the smell of wood fires in the air; and you have Ovando’s Old West Christmas Fest.  Kids can enter the gingerbread house challenge, learn how to throw axes competition style, watch an old West Shoot by gun toting locals, and visit daily with Cowboy Claus, who arrives on horseback along highway 200.

4th of July Celebration -- Ovando's 4th of July has been called "The Biggest Taste of Old Time Americana, by the Smallest Old Town".  Ovando stands proud decorated in red, white and blue with flags flying everywhere.  Starting off the festivities is the 4th of July Parade whose theme every year is "Everybody participates!  Nobody watches"; with more horse entries than humans. Then there is the patriotic speeches in front of the museum followed by lunch where the town’s volunteer fire department serves up a slab of beef so tender you don’t even need a knife.