“Mud, Music, and Memory:

The Historical Significance of the Aber Day Kegger in Montana History”

In the tapestry of Montana’s cultural past, few threads shimmer with the same complex glow as the Aber Day Kegger. Between 1972 and 1979, what began as a modest student effort to raise funds for a struggling university library blossomed into a legendary annual celebration of youth, community, and the paradoxical bond between civic idealism and revelry. Today, the Aber Day Kegger remains a vivid historical emblem: a symbol of a generation’s aspirations and excesses, of the challenges of student activism, and of the broader transformations of American society in the 1970s.

Origins: From Service to Celebration

The story of the Aber Day Kegger cannot be fully appreciated without understanding the tradition of Aber Day itself. In 1915, the University of Montana inaugurated Aber Day to honor William Aber, one of its earliest faculty members renowned for his dedication to campus beautification. On this spring occasion, students and faculty would pause classes to plant trees, tend hedges, and rejuvenate the campus grounds. The tradition celebrated both physical renewal and collective stewardship of place. 

Yet by the mid-20th century, the spirit of Aber Day had waned. Students often saw the cleanup more as an excuse for mischief than for meaningful work, and the tradition faded from campus life. It was not until the early 1970s—amidst broader cultural shifts in youth activism and community engagement—that Aber Day would return, indelibly transformed. 

In 1972, a group of University of Montana students faced what many would consider a sincere challenge: the university library’s collections were insufficient, jeopardizing both the institution’s academic mission and its reputation. Sociology professor Marty Baker encouraged his students to undertake meaningful community service projects. A cohort led by upperclassman Clark Hanson decided to raise funds in an unconventional way: host a benefit kegger. This idea was both practical and daring, combining music, beer, and spirited university life to support a pressing educational need. 

The event was intentional in its simplicity. With beer donated on contingency from local distributor Earl Sherron, a makeshift flatbed truck serving as a stage, and local bands eager to play, around 3,000 people gathered at Bonner Flats on June 1, 1972. For just $2, attendees enjoyed live music and all you could drink Olympia beer, producing $1,575 in funds for the library—an astonishing sum for a single day of student effort. 

Evolution: Community, Commerce, and Culture

From its inception, the kegger was more than a party; it was a reflection of the tumultuous social moment. In the early 1970s, several states—including Montana—had lowered their legal drinking ages, and the college demographic was newly empowered to drink legally. This shift, coupled with a national surge in beer marketing to younger adults, meant that events like the Aber Day Kegger drew both eager crowds and watchful critics. 

By 1973, the event had outgrown its original venue. Perhaps more importantly, it gave rise to a renewed embrace of Aber Day itself: the student government and administrators reinstated the campus cleanup tradition on the same weekend as the kegger, linking charitable service with communal festivity. Although the university declined to officially sponsor the beer event, the colloquial name “Aber Day Kegger” took hold, binding two disparate traditions into one. 

As attendance swelled—to 4,000 in 1973 and some 10,000 by the mid-1970s—the kegger relocated to the K-O Rodeo Grounds near Missoula. Here its logistically ambitious nature blossomed. Portable toilets replaced the woods, fraternities managed parking, and beer flowed from elaborate tap stations where hundreds of kegs were linked via ice-filled stock tanks. Attendees stood in ankle-deep “beer mud,” sang together, danced on grassy hillsides, and spread blankets under the open sky. 

Music—always central to the event’s character—grew in stature. Local Montana bands like the Mission Mountain Wood Band shared stages with touring performers such as Doug Kershaw, Earl Scruggs, and Bonnie Raitt, making the Kegger not only a social happening but a regional cultural touchstone. 

Yet, perhaps the most remarkable facet of the Aber Day Kegger was its role as a philanthropic engine. Over its eight-year history, the kegger donated tens of thousands of dollars to the University of Montana library and other local causes. It became, in effect, one of the largest non-profit benefit keggers ever documented, with Guinness World Records once acknowledging its scale and outreach. 

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A Mirror of Its Moment: Controversy and Change

Not everyone saw the Aber Day Kegger through nostalgic eyes. As the festival grew, so too did concerns about alcohol consumption, drunken driving, and public safety. Neighborhood residents along Miller Creek Road, where the rodeo grounds sat, voiced strong complaints about unruly behavior, traffic congestion, and the event’s perceived normalization of excessive drinking. Even well-intended organizers struggled to balance celebration with responsibility. 

Those tensions mirrored broader cultural debates of the era: concerns about youth drinking were rising nationally just as states reconsidered their drinking age laws. Between 1972 and 1979, Montana’s legal drinking age shifted in response to these pressures—a microcosm of similar trends across the country that culminated in the nationwide drinking age of 21 by the 1980s. 

Within the university community, opinions were likewise mixed. Some faculty and administrators saw the kegger as a valuable student-led initiative that strengthened community ties and raised much-needed funds. Others worried that the association between academia and unfettered drinking undermined the institution’s educational mission. The Drug and Alcohol Advisory Committee’s later efforts to revisit the idea of a sanctioned event in the early 2000s reflect this ongoing dialogue about student life and wellness. 

Legacy: Memory, Meaning, and Myth

Although the final official Aber Day Kegger occurred in 1979, its resonance in Montana’s collective memory has endured. Photographs archived by the University of Montana’s Mansfield Library preserve scenes of dancing couples, spirited youth, and throngs gathered in the radiant Montana sun. 

For many alumni of the era, the kegger evokes a bittersweet nostalgia: a time of formative youth when community purpose and personal pleasure were inseparably entwined. Writers and chroniclers alike celebrate the Kegger not simply as a party, but as a gathering of shared values—music, friendship, generosity, and the artful intermingling of earnest service with joyful festivity. 

Academic history must also acknowledge how the narrative fits within larger social trends. The Aber Day Kegger was neither an isolated anomaly nor a purely local curiosity; it was part of a broader constellation of campus benefit events, student activism, and youth culture movements that defined much of the 1970s. That decade, marked by post-Vietnam cultural reevaluation and the rise of new forms of civic expression, produced spaces where students could challenge conventions while contributing meaningfully to their institutions. 

While the kegger itself faded from official practice, the revived tradition of springtime campus service—Aber Day—continued into the late 1990s before being incorporated into the broader celebration of Earth Day. Thus, the legacy of Aber Day today is not merely in beer and bustle, but in rooted values of stewardship and collective caretaking. 

The Aber Day Kegger remains an evocative illustration of how place, purpose, and party can coalesce into social memory. In modern Montana, echoes of the event are found not just in alumni recollections or archival images, but in the very way communities remember their past: with humor, with affection, and with an awareness of the complexity that comes when youthful exuberance meets public life.

Works Cited

Good Beer Hunting. “The Rise and Fall of the 1970s’ Biggest Kegger.” Good Beer Hunting, 19 Sept. 2023, https://www.goodbeerhunting.com/blog/2023/9/19/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-1970s-biggest-kegger. 

Aber Day Kegger. Montana History Portal, University of Montana Mansfield Library, https://www.mtmemory.org/nodes/view/18881. 

Aber Day Kegger. Montana History Portal, University of Montana Mansfield Library, https://www.mtmemory.org/nodes/view/18927. 

Aber Day Kegger. Montana History Portal, University of Montana Mansfield Library, https://www.mtmemory.org/nodes/view/18980. 

Hoefle, Stu. “Aber Day: The Kegger of all Keggers.” Raised in the West Magazine, 10 May, https://www.raisedinthewest.com/archives/the-party-of-all-parties. 

University of Montana Student Affairs Drug and Alcohol Advisory Committee 2004-2006 Biennial Review. University of Montana, https://www.umt.edu/student-affairs/documents/2004-2006BiennialReview-FinalDraft.pdf. 

Doug Kershaw / Earl Scruggs / Mission Mountain Wood Band at Aber Day Kegger. Concert Archives, https://www.concertarchives.org/concerts/aber-day-kegger. 

Bonnie Raitt / Doug Kershaw / Mission Mountain Wood Band at Aber Day Kegger. Concert Archives, https://www.concertarchives.org/concerts/aber-day-kegger-51d81832-ac85-4662-9624-25decd2dede7.