The annual St. Patrick's Day parade will roll through downtown Great Falls on Saturday, March 16, 2024.
The parade is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. in front of the Civic Center, and will proceed down Central Avenue to Eighth Street.
The parade is being organized by the Ancient Order of Hibernians Great Falls Division 1; click here to visit the Facebook page.
The organization is also using the parade as an opportunity to help the Great Falls Community Food Bank, which will have a float in the parade.
Parade participants will be accepting food donations from spectators along the route. Among the most-requested items for the food bank: canned vegetable and fruit; canned meat; peanut butter; jelly/jam; condiments; and cereal.
If you won't be able to make it to the parade, there are also donation bins this week at Glacier State Electric (300 5th Avenue South); Celtic Cowboy (116 1st Avenue South); Schulte's (3800 3rd Avenue South); Our Lady of Lourdes school; Holy Spirit school; Central Catholic High School; and Hometana (112 1st Avenue South).
A news release from the Ancient Order of Hibernians states:
We are honored to have John Rummel as our Grand Marshal. He has been an asset to our community for many years, and we are blessed to have his participation in this year’s parade. We also have our First Family who follows in directly behind the Grand Marshal. This year our First Family will be Sherri and Jerry Schmitz. Sherri has dedicated much of her career to the Catholic Schools here in Great Falls. Jerry is also an advocate for our youth as he has spent countless hours coaching within our community over 30 years.
Montana and Irish-American history are closely woven together, with the state seeing a large influx of Irish immigrants in the later parts of the 19th century and into the 20th century.
"We know that a lot of the Irish that came to Montana came from the Western Seaboard of Ireland, and we know that for the most part were Irish speakers, so they were post-famine immigrants that left Ireland, so when they came here to Montana, they came steeped in Irish tradition," said Ciara Ryan with the Montana History Foundation.
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Photos from 2023 parade:
