Havre Chamber organizing for summer events

Editor’s note: The first night of Sounds on the Square has been canceled due to weather.

The Havre Area Chamber of Commerce has a busy summer ahead of it with a number of large annual events coming up in the area.

Chamber Executive Director Jessica Fagerbakke said the first of these events is their Agribusiness Committee's Agriculture Appreciation Banquet which is combined with Northern Agricultural Research Center Field Day June 23.

Fagerbakke said these events are an effort to recognize the area's, and the state's, biggest industry, its history and the people that make it work.

"The purpose of the event is to recognize and thank the people in agriculture for their contributions to the Havre economy as well as that of Montana," she said.

She said the event will include day tours, a barbecue dinner, and a presentation of awards by the Chamber's Ag Committee.

Earlier in the month, Fagerbakke said, the chamber will also be involved in Sounds on the Square, a music event set to run Wednesdays from 6 to 8 p.m. in Havre's Town Square starting this week.

The first performances will be KNMC Showcases on June 15 and 22, followed by Big Sky Drive June 29, BJ Geetarokie July 6, Gene Allen and Friends July 13, Roc Band July 20, T.J. Overcast and Friends July 27, Mike Bober Aug. 3, Derek Hann Aug. 10 and Blind Luck Aug. 17.

"Change up dinner this summer with a picnic at Town Square," the flyer listing the band lineup says.

Fagerbakke also said Havre's lauded Saturday Market will begin July 9 and run through this year's Festival Days, set for the weekend of September 17.

She said the theme of this year's Festival Days is "Find yourself in Havre."

She said there will also be one more Havre Pride Clean-up Day before Festival Days, but she doesn't have a nailed-down date just yet.

Also July 9, she said, will be the grand reopening of the H. Earl Clack Memorial Museum in its new location in the former Griggs Printing building, a space that museum board and foundation members say will allow them to show off a lot more artifacts in a better location.

Fagerbakke said the Chamber will be involved in the ribbon cutting for the opening.

Fagerbakke only began as the Chamber's executive director in March of this year and had to hit the ground running. Organizing for annual events like these were part of that.

She said things have certainly been chaotic, but, with so many experienced people on the Chamber's various committees to help her, it has gone well so far.

The first big yearly event she had to organize was the Bear Paw Marathon earlier this month, an event that, by all accounts, went very well. She said she's enjoying the work.

"I'm loving it," she said.

She said runners from across the U.S. came and told them they wouldn't have been able to tell it was only the second year of the event, given how smoothly it went.

She said the event beat last year's registration numbers, with 302 people attending.