BILLINGS — Hundreds of classic cars rolled through Billings this weekend for the 22nd annual Burn the Point classic car show, a Labor Day tradition that has drawn car enthusiasts to the city for over two decades.
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The classic car show brought more than 300 cars to Henry's Garage on Saturday, while nearly 500 cars cruised through downtown during Friday night's parade.
For those who participate, the weekend is also a chance to reconnect with friends, show off years of work, and remember a time when cruising downtown was part of everyday life in Billings.
"It's just a very good car show," said Larry Speck, who brought his 1931 Ford Model A. "Probably the best one all year in Billings."
Speck's Model A has a 347 Ford stroker engine, a three-speed Ford transmission with automatic overdrive, air conditioning, and electric windows. He has spent countless hours working on the car, drawing on his experience as a former mechanic.
But even after years around cars, Speck said Burn the Point still gives him a reason to come back.
"Because of all the cars," he said. "You always see something new every year. Something you haven't seen before."
His neighbor, Bret Ortgies, shares that enthusiasm.
Ortgies has owned his 1955 Ford Fairlane Victoria for about six years. The car has a 312 V8 and a top-loader four-speed transmission. He has participated in Burn the Point for more than 15 years, including with other cars before buying the Fairlane.
For him, the appeal is as much about the people as the vehicles.
"It's just the camaraderie and seeing everybody's cool stuff, and maybe, you know, seeing friends that you don't see very often," Ortgies said.
The name Burn the Point reaches back to Billings' cruising culture of the 1950s, '60s, and '70s. Teenagers would gather downtown with their cars, cruising along familiar routes and turning their vehicles into a social gathering place. The tradition eventually faded, but the name remained.
Conrad Caron, president of the Western Heritage Center board and a lifelong Billings resident, said the event is a reminder of that history.
"This has been going for 20 years now," Caron said. "So it's a permanent fixture. It goes back to the '60s and '70s when Burn the Point was your Friday and Saturday night in downtown Billings."
Caron also considers himself a lifelong car enthusiast.
"That's one thing that's constant, obviously, since the early 1900s, is cars," he said. “The U.S. has become a car culture. That's most of what California was based on was the car culture, and we continue that here in Billings.”
That history was on display during Friday night's parade, when thousands of people lined downtown streets to watch the cars cruise by.
Related: ‘Burn the Point’ parade roars through downtown Billings
I got to experience the parade from the passenger seat of a particularly unusual piece of Billings history: the Western Heritage Center's recreation of a 1911 Billings Brewing Company beer bottle car.
Caron drove the vehicle through downtown as spectators waved, cheered, and pulled out their phones to capture the unusual car.
The vehicle was built for the Western Heritage Center after donations from Bill and Anne Cole helped fund the project. John and Deb Skiles of Absarokee built the car, which arrived at the museum in November and was completed by the end of March.
Since then, the beer bottle car has become a regular presence at local parades and car shows.
"It's been everywhere," Caron said. "We've got, as far as I can remember, we've got two first-place parades."
Burn the Point also has a charitable purpose. The event is one of the major fundraisers for the Chase Hawks Memorial Association, which was founded in the 1990s to honor Chase Hawks, who died at a young age in a bicycle accident.
Lars Hanson, president of the Chase Hawks Memorial Association, said money raised through the group's events helps people facing crises in the five-county area surrounding Yellowstone County.
"The funds that we raise from our events are used to help our friends and neighbors in crisis," Hanson said. "We give away about between a hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand a year for those crisis funds."
Related: Thousands of Billings residents attend annual classic car show for crisis fund
The Burn the Point weekend has grown significantly since its early days. Ortgies said his friend Don Cantrell helped start the original event about 22 years ago with the idea of creating a car show without an entry fee for participants.
The Chase Hawks Memorial Association eventually took over the event from the Downtown Billings Association and turned it into a fundraiser.
Today, Hanson said Burn the Point is among the largest car shows in Montana and draws thousands of people downtown for the Friday parade.
"There's something about a classic car," Hanson said. "Everybody likes a classic car. It's cool."
For the people who bring their cars to Burn the Point, that appeal can be difficult to explain with specifications alone. Instead, it's about what the cars represent.
Ortgies said he has been "car crazy" his entire life, and he sees classic cars as a way to reconnect with memories.
"I think it takes you back to a better time," Ortgies said. "Maybe it sparked a memory from when you were in high school, or maybe you were on your first date or dating your, you know, your future wife or something. There's just a lot of memories associated with old cars, especially."
That's part of what keeps people coming back to Burn the Point year after year, and for one Labor Day weekend, the city's old cruising culture gets another chance to hit the road.
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