Dubois County Indiana St. Anthony Fireman’s Festival
In the small Dubois County community of St. Anthony, the biggest Saturday of the summer belongs to the volunteer fire department. Once each August, the grounds around the community center fill with show cars, barbecue smoke, raffle tickets and fried chicken, all organised by the firefighters themselves. One detail catches newcomers off guard: no published layer found ever prints this article’s long title in full. Every flyer, schedule and listing shortens the event to a fest, and the pages below follow the record.
About the St. Anthony Fireman’s Fest
The published name is “St. Anthony Fireman’s Fest”, used by a Ferdinand Chamber of Commerce newsletter layer in August 2017 and by the county visitor bureau layer for the August 2026 edition. The fire department’s own paperwork varies the wording without lengthening it: its 2024 flyer headlines the event “St Anthony Firemen’s Fest”, dropping the full stop and switching to a plural Firemen’s; its 2023 schedule calls it simply the “Firemen’s Fest”; its 2022 flyer shouts the short name in capitals; and a county visitor guide layer from 2023 prints “St. Anthony Firemen’s Fest”. No credible layer adds the full word Festival.
The host community is St. Anthony, Indiana, described in the organiser’s 2024 flyer only by its position east of Huntingburg on State Road 64. The town is not the county seat; that honour belongs to Jasper, as state library and visitor bureau layers both confirm. The organiser is the town’s volunteer fire department, printed “St. Anthony Fire Dept.” by the visitor bureau and “ST. ANTHONY VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPT.” across its own flyers, and no other organiser is named anywhere.
Everything happens at the St. Anthony Community Center and its grounds, on South Cross Street; one flyer prints the building as the “St Community Center”, dropping the full stop. The 2024 flyer prints two different street numbers for that street on a single sheet, one in its car show header and another in the fest body; the 2022 flyer and 2023 visitor guide agree with the body form, yet this article picks neither. Within the grounds, the 2023 schedule serves dinners inside the hall, puts kids games inside the tennis courts and kickball on the softball field.
Quick Facts
| Point | Record |
| Published name | St. Anthony Fireman’s Fest |
| Host community | St. Anthony, Indiana |
| County | Dubois County |
| County seat | Jasper; the host town is not the seat |
| Organiser | The town’s volunteer fire department |
| Venue | St. Anthony Community Center and its grounds |
| Timing | A Saturday in August |
| Documented editions | 2017, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2026 |
| Admission wording | Free admission wording printed in the 2024 flyer |
| Signature food | Fried chicken dinners served inside the hall |
A History Written in Flyers
This fest has no founding story any layer is willing to tell. No flyer, schedule, newsletter or listing found gives a year when the event began, and nothing in the record lets a careful writer work one out. What survives is a paper trail of individual Augusts.
For a useful comparison, see the Delaware County Indiana Muncie Homecoming Festival for another county festival.
The earliest layer is the Ferdinand Chamber of Commerce newsletter of August 2017, which lists “the annual St. Anthony Fireman’s Fest” and urges readers to support their local fire department. The word annual shows the chamber already treated it as a recurring fixture, but with no day and no programme given, 2017 stands attested yet almost bare. The organiser’s 2022 flyer is richer: live music by Studebaker and The Rumors, fried chicken dinners from four, a backyard barbecue tasting, a beer garden and a huge raffle, all on Saturday 20 August. Its scanned anniversary wording is too garbled to quote, so it plays no part here.
The fullest document is the department’s schedule for Saturday 19 August 2023, a timed programme examined below; the county visitor guide independently places the fest that day at the Community Center. The 2024 flyer, for Saturday 17 August, holds the record’s one puzzle. Inside its Show & Shine car show block it prints a “27th Annual” billing, yet the layout leaves it unclear whether that billing belongs to the car show alone or to the fest as a whole, and this article draws no founding year from it. No 2025 edition surfaced in any layer searched, so that August is treated as undocumented rather than cancelled. The record resumes with the visitor bureau’s 2026 layer, dating the fest to Saturday 15 August 2026 under the motto “Come Early, Stay Late!”
What to Expect
The 2023 schedule guides the day. The morning belongs to contestants and car people: a concession stand opens at nine, the Show & Shine car, truck and motorcycle show takes registrations from morning until noon, and Fire Horse Yoga unfolds at the stage at nine. A backyard barbecue contest runs its chili and variety tasting from late morning into early afternoon, with awards on stage at four; a cornhole tournament sponsored that year by the Dubois County Rotary Club starts at eleven; fried chicken and burgers join the concessions from eleven.
Children get their own geography, with kids games including Silly Safari and a kiddie tractor pull inside the tennis courts and kickball by school grade on the softball field; the visitor bureau’s 2026 layer keeps kids games on the bill. A beer garden opens at three in the 2023 schedule and runs into the early hours, a fixture the 2024 flyer also keeps. From four, the 2023 schedule serves fried chicken dinners inside the hall: chicken, potatoes, baked beans and a side printed in the schedule’s own spelling as “thresh machine tomatoes”. The grand raffle that year offered one hundred seventy-eight prizes as printed, drawn at eight inside the hall. Music closes the day in two shifts, Studebaker in the early evening and The Rumors to midnight. The 2024 flyer adds DJ music all day at the car show, dash plaques for early entries, and award classes by year range plus a Special Interest class and a Fire Chief’s Award. For 2026 the visitor bureau promises the Show & Shine show and barbecue contest opening the day, fried chicken meals from four, and Michael Wilmes, First & Main and headliner Studebaker.
Planning Your Visit
Aim for the community center grounds on the August Saturday the department announces, and treat the organiser’s own flyers and schedules as the documents that settle times. The visitor bureau’s county summer coverage is the second confirmation point, since its 2026 layer carried the August 15 date. Because no 2025 edition appears in the record, checking the current year’s paperwork matters more than usual.
Money needs careful handling, because the record speaks narrowly. The 2024 flyer prints the words “FREE ADMISSION TO PUBLIC”, but inside its car show block, and this article repeats them fenced exactly that way. Neither the 2026 visitor bureau layer nor the 2023 schedule publishes a general admission price. Component charges do exist: the 2024 flyer prices show entries on the day, cars and trucks higher than motorcycles, and the 2023 schedule required a bracelet for the barbecue tasting. No figures for those components are recorded, so bring flexible cash for food, entries and raffle tickets.
Drivers should navigate to the community center on South Cross Street and ignore any single street number attached to the venue, since the organiser’s own flyer prints two. Parking details appear in no layer found, so arrive early and follow the show cars. From Jasper or Huntingburg along State Road 64 the trip is a short county hop.
A Sample Day at the Fest
Arrive before nine and the grounds are in their working clothes: the concession stand opens, show vehicles roll into registration and the yoga session gathers at the stage. Spend the late morning between the barbecue contest’s tasting and the cornhole tournament, then let the concession stand’s fried chicken and burgers, served from eleven, settle lunch.
Give the early afternoon to the children if you brought any, and to the car show if you did not. The tennis courts hold the kids games and the kiddie tractor pull, the softball field runs kickball by school grade, and the show rows reward slow walking before their three o’clock awards. When the beer garden opens at three the day changes key. Barbecue awards come from the stage at four, exactly when the dinners begin inside the hall, so choose your four o’clock seat deliberately. Stay for the raffle drawing at eight and let The Rumors carry the night to midnight. The visitor bureau’s motto, come early and stay late, reads less like a slogan than a summary of the documented days.
How This Fest Compares
Dubois County keeps several fire department gatherings, and the 2023 visitor guide lists neighbours easily confused with this one. The Ferdinand Firemen’s Ball and the Birdseye Park and Firemen’s Picnic are separate events run by other departments, not editions of the gathering at St. Anthony. What distinguishes this fest is its combination of a judged vehicle show, a barbecue contest and a full timed programme on one property.
Two wider comparisons protect readers from real mix ups. Church listing layers record parish festivals named for the same saint in Indianapolis and in Morris, Indiana; those are parish events in different towns, run by congregations rather than a fire department. A community days celebration with a firemen’s parade in DuBois, Pennsylvania belongs to another state and county entirely. Generic pages about a fireman’s festival in 2026 were set aside during research.
A Checklist for the Day
- A folding chair or blanket for the evening of music
- Cash in small notes for concessions, raffle tickets and entries
- Sunscreen and a hat for the open grounds
- An appetite timed for burgers from eleven and dinners from four
- A plan for children covering the court games and tractor pull
- A camera for the Show & Shine rows before the awards
- A designated driver if the beer garden is part of your evening
- A light layer for after dark, when music runs to midnight
Beyond the Fest Grounds
The fest rewards a little county wandering. The organiser’s flyer places St. Anthony east of Huntingburg on State Road 64, so the drive strings together the small communities of southern Dubois County, with Huntingburg the nearest larger stop in one direction and Jasper, the county seat, in the other. The visitor bureau’s 2026 roundup of summer festivals to enjoy in Dubois County is the very layer that previews this event, so the fest sits inside a wider county season.
Neighbouring departments keep their own dates too, including the Ferdinand Firemen’s Ball and the Birdseye Park and Firemen’s Picnic, making the county a small circuit of volunteer run celebrations.
Why the Fest Matters
The earliest layer states the purpose outright: support your local fire department, the chamber newsletter urged in 2017 beside its listing of the annual fest. The raffle with its one hundred seventy-eight printed prizes, the show entries, the tasting bracelet and the concession stand are the mechanism by which a small community converts a summer Saturday into support for its volunteers.
The fest also matters as continuity. A town too small to be a county seat, described in its own flyer mainly by a compass point and a state road, produces paperwork detailed enough to schedule yoga at nine and a band until midnight. The gaps in the record, the undocumented 2025 and the founding year nobody states, belong to that story: an event kept alive by the people who staff it, documented when they print a flyer and quiet when they do not.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does every layer call it a fest instead of a festival?
Because that is the name the organisers and the county’s own publicity actually print. The chamber newsletter of 2017 and the visitor bureau layer of 2026 both use “St. Anthony Fireman’s Fest”, the 2024 flyer uses the plural “St Anthony Firemen’s Fest”, and the 2023 schedule shortens things further to the “Firemen’s Fest”. No credible layer found adds the full word Festival.
What should I plan to eat during the day?
The documented menu is reassuringly plain. The 2023 schedule has concessions open from nine, fried chicken and burgers from eleven, and full dinners inside the Community Center from four, with chicken, potatoes, baked beans and the schedule’s own “thresh machine tomatoes” on the plate. Barbecue fans get their moment earlier, through the contest’s tasting from late morning into early afternoon.
Which parts of the day are aimed at children?
The 2023 schedule gives children the tennis courts and the softball field. Kids games there include Silly Safari and a kiddie tractor pull, while kickball is organised by school grade on the field. Families remain in the newest layer too, since the visitor bureau’s 2026 preview also lists kids games and activities.
Do the published layers give any idea of the crowd size?
None of them does. No organiser flyer, timed schedule, chamber newsletter or visitor bureau layer attaches any crowd figure to this event, counted, claimed or estimated, and the research leaves that silence unfilled. Any attendance number quoted for this fest elsewhere should be treated as unsourced. What the documents measure instead is the programme: the hours, the contests and the raffle’s printed prizes.
What to Expect From the Next Dubois County Indiana St. Anthony Fireman’s Festival
How often is Dubois County Indiana St. Anthony Fireman’s Festival held?
The layers describe a recurring August fixture. The chamber newsletter was already calling the fest annual in 2017, and the visitor bureau’s 2026 layer presents it as a returning summer festival. Documented editions fall in 2017 and then on August Saturdays in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2026, with 2025 missing from the record, so the paperwork supports a fest mounted each August by the volunteer department.
When is the next Dubois County Indiana St. Anthony Fireman’s Festival?
The most recent edition the layers date is Saturday 15 August 2026, previewed by the county visitor bureau with the car show and barbecue contest opening the day and fried chicken meals from four. No layer found announces a dated edition beyond that one. The practical route to the next date is the department’s own paperwork, which fixed the day in 2022, 2023 and 2024.
Will the dates change?
They have stayed within a narrow band without settling on a single weekend. The documented modern editions all land on August Saturdays, spread across the month: the twentieth in 2022, the nineteenth in 2023, the seventeenth in 2024 and the fifteenth in 2026. No layer promises a permanent Saturday, and the missing 2025 record argues for confirming each year’s date in the organiser’s flyer or the visitor bureau’s summer coverage before travelling.
One August Saturday, Kept by Volunteers
The fest at St. Anthony asks little of its visitors: come early, stay late, eat the chicken, buy a raffle ticket and let the band finish. In return it shows how a small Indiana community looks after itself, one flyer and one August Saturday at a time. Nothing here is inflated, and the firefighters who organise the day are the same people the day exists to support.
