Sheep Drive fun way to spend a weekend

Reedpoint, Mont., swells from a population of 96 to about 5,000 to 8,000 to watch sheep get driven down the main street of town and to enjoy the annual Great Montana Sheep Drive festival activities.

Men and women, mostly wearing cowboy hats, come to celebrate and compete in the day’s events each year. This festival held on Sept. 2 has the flavor of a wild and crazy Western event, and it is.

Reedpoint is classic Western-style town with false front old buildings on Main Street and a saloon with swinging doors at its entrance located on one of the main corners. At the end of Main Street three old wooden grain elevators with painted advertising signs serve as the town’s skyline.

In its own way Reedpoint represents what rural American Western towns used to look like. This town is a perfect place to stage a sheep drive. It’s a promotional gimmick to bring business to a usually sleepy town. For one day in September people come in flocks in watch the sheep drive, and they help drive the local economy.

Each year the event gets larger than the year before. Started in the late 1990s, the owner of the saloon/restaurant/bed and breakfast, Russ Sclievert, organized the first sheep drive as a joke. Word got out about the drive, and the street was lined with people who cheered and watched about 20 sheep run past. The event has grown since then into a huge “happening” that draws people in from all over the state.

You can almost guess some of the events offered during the day. There is a sheep-shearing contest. Roast lamb is offered by street vendors. At the wood-sawing event, using two-man cross saws, team times and wins are auctioned off beforehand for charity. A lucky guy won a “Smelliest Sheepherder” title. There were T-shirts on sale with “I need a sheep date” printed on the front.

The day’s activities include a parade with many wooden wagons pulled by teams of horses and mounted horsemen and women in their best Western clothes. The parade includes several sheepherders’ wagons. A calf is led down the street with a baby bottle, and of course the local fire engines and police cars follow up the parade with their sirens wailing. After the parade in front of the saloon a fight erupts with gunshots and bodies littering the street. The action is repeated at high noon in case you miss the first gunfight.

At 4 in the afternoon the sidewalks are filled with spectators, in some places five and six deep, anticipating the main event. Strangely, the crowd seems to quiet down as several runners dressed in white with black berets and red bandanas race in front of the long blanket of white wool behind them. Unlike bulls racing down the street, the sheep stop several times, reluctant to pass though the crowd in front of them. Then the lead sheep takes off, and there is a blur of sheep running and jumping down the street.

To those who haven’t been around sheep, they are able to jump very high straight up. They look like they are on four pogo sticks. They reach the end of the main street, pass by the wooden grain elevators and disappear around the far corner. The sheep drive is over, and the experience is one that isn’t soon forgotten. There is some more competition with local folks sawing logs. There is an evening street dance. Then the people start to disperse. Some move toward the saloons. Families head for home laughing and enjoying the moment.

By morning Reedpoint has again become a small, quiet Montana town. Strangers are welcome in this town. This year, by all accounts, “Great Montana Sheep Drive” will be bigger and better than last year. The sheep drive has become a traditional annual event. This could be the trip you have been looking for to use as a fun and different long weekend escape.