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EVENTS 44 MOVIE REVIEWS 45 PAWS & CLAWS 48 Arts&Entertainment
Creston Auction Celebrates Semicentennial
From humble beginnings as a re department fundraiser, the Creston Auction and Country Fair has grown over 50 years into a community cornerstone
CBY CLARE MENZEL OF THE BEACON
RESTON FIRE CHIEF GARY Mahugh, who grew up a few yards from the Creston Grange
Hall, remembers watching a man sell 100-pound sacks of potatoes from the building’s steps. The deal was part of the Creston Auction and Country Fair when Mahugh was a small boy likely no more than 100 pounds himself. Mahugh, whose father was also a re ghter in Creston, has attended every single auction in the event’s 50-year history. He’s watched the fundraiser grow from a small community gathering where every face was familiar to a multi-day event that draws some 7,000 people from around the country on the rst weekend of April.
The 2016 auction will be held April 1-3 in Creston, 12 miles east of Kalispell on Montana Highway 35.
Like many traditions held dear to a small community, the Creston Auction has changed and in many ways stayed the same over the years. While the trap- pings, the scale, and the items on the auc- tion block look a little di erent than they did in 1966, this year’s event will be the same celebration of community that the Creston Auction has always embodied.
In the 1950s, the Creston Fire Depart- ment was established by a handful of men who had a desire to lend a helping hand to their neighbors, a Chevy truck with an irrigation system, and a shoestring bud- get that came primarily from the volun- teers’ own wallets.
The remen’s wives — the depart- ment’s support team — brought food and co ee to res and began holding small
Creston re chief Fred Heim, left, and Harold Yaeger in an undated photo. COURTESY PHOTO
auctions and other fundraisers, selling baked goods, crafts and produce. In 1966, the re department families organized the inaugural Creston Auction in the late fall, after the harvest was over. That rst year, no more than 200 people showed up, and they raised $533. There was only one auction sale, and it lasted just a few hours, wrapping up by Saturday night.
Every year since, the crowds have grown in size, and it didn’t take long before all of Creston, not just the re department, was involved.
“Once people come, they come back and they bring their friends,” Mahugh said. “The thing I look at is how back then a couple hundred people was a big event and how incredible the growth has been...
First it was just the re department’s fam- ilies, but we couldn’t do that any more, so they reached out to the community.”
In 1976, the auction was moved to the spring. Hundreds of folks turned out, raising $4,500, much of which went to the purchase of road signs for the district. By 1988, the auction was drawing over 4,000 attendees, and in 1990, organizers
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MARCH 30, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM