Two anniversaries are stacking on top of each other this season. The Mountain Air Music Series is running its 15th year of Thursday concerts, and the City of Ouray is threading a 150th-birthday storyline through everything from opera-house lectures to an October gala. Meanwhile, a Main Street building that had been dark for years has a new sign over the door. If you already live here, the calendar looks familiar at a glance but the details have shifted.
The green paint is gone at 726 Main
The old O'Brien's Pub sat closed for years, painted green with bright yellow lettering. That building has a new life. Nancy Feeser and her husband Mike bought it in February, restored the 1911 floors, repainted the exterior deep blue with golden accents, and hoisted a gold mermaid above the bar. They opened The Tavern with a soft launch on June 7 and are now serving what Nancy calls "elevated pub food," lunch and dinner, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., seven days a week.
Nancy is not new to Ouray kitchens. She trained as a chef in Los Angeles, cooked brunch at the Outlaw for her sister Alison Marschall, ran the retail store Grateful Goods for three years, and has worked as a real estate agent in town for six. Her stated pricing goal is worth quoting directly:
"I'm keeping my prices low so that the food is attainable for everyone, even the locals."
For a Main Street address in a mountain town where tourist pricing usually wins, that's the sentence to test against your check.
Thursday nights at Fellin Park
The Mountain Air Music Series turned 15 this year. Same format as always: free, Thursday evenings in June, 6 to 10 p.m., at Fellin Park at 1001 US-550. The lineup, though, was heavier on national touring acts than a typical year.
| Date | Headliner | Opener |
|---|---|---|
| June 4 | AJ Fullerton | Grant Sabin Trio |
| June 11 | Nik Parr & The Selfless Lovers | You Knew Me When |
| June 18 | Sweet Lizzy Project | Sara Jean Kelley |
| June 25 | Cruz Contreras & The Black Lillies | Griffin William Sherry |
Two things locals may not have caught. First, You Knew Me When, the husband-and-wife duo of Cie and Karisa Hoover, moved to Ouray from Nashville and are now writing Colorado-inspired music from here. Second, Mountain Air Music Inc. is a 501(c)(3) that is partnering with the city on Fellin Park electrical upgrades and saving toward a permanent stage. If you have been showing up to concerts for a decade and wondering why the setup still feels temporary, that is the plan being worked on in the background.
June is done, but Fellin Park keeps going. Ultimate Frisbee runs Sundays with warm-up at 1:45 and games from 2 to 4, open to any skill level. City softball plays Tuesdays and Fridays from 5 to 8 through mid-August, coordinated by Sean Hart in Parks and Rec.
The week the canyons fill up
The Ouray Canyon Festival runs August 5 through 9, 2026, hosted by the Ouray Canyon Club. If you have ever wondered why there are suddenly out-of-state license plates at the Weehawken and Angel Creek pull-offs the first week of August, this is why. The club has been running the festival since 2009.
A few specifics that matter if you live along one of the drainages:
- Group sizes are capped at 6 for safety, with 30-minute to one-hour gaps between start times when multiple groups run the same canyon.
- The canyons in play sit close to town on purpose. Cascade Creek, Portland Creek, and Oak Creek all end in town. Corbett Creek is five minutes north. Weehawken, Angel, Bear, and the Upper Uncompahgre are ten minutes south. A few wilderness canyons sit east in Cow Creek and require 4WD.
- Cascade Creek has the tallest rappel in the group at 85 meters on the final drop, after more than ten rappels including two 60-meter descents. It ends on 3rd Avenue.
One environmental note. Ouray County remained in serious drought as of the June 24 U.S. Drought Monitor read, with the northern San Juans in the severe category and most of Colorado's mountains in extreme or exceptional. Canyon flows are still year-round in these drainages, but if you have been here long enough to compare seasons, this is a quieter-water year than 2023.
The 150th-year layer
The town's sesquicentennial is not a single event. It is a thread running through venues you already visit.
At the Wright Opera House at 472 Main, the Ouray County Historical Society has been running an "Evenings of History" series. The "Ouray 150: The Early Years" installment tickets at $5, free for society members. The 1888 building itself is worth the entry price on a rainy afternoon. It has been the town's performance venue for over a century and is preserved by Friends of the Wright Opera House as a working theater, not a museum.
The 7th annual Ouray International Film Festival ran through the Wright in June this year, and included a screenwriting talk from Kirsten "Kiwi" Smith, whose credits include "10 Things I Hate About You" and "Ella Enchanted." If you missed it, the festival has settled into a June rhythm at the Wright with panel discussions, awards, and parties across four days.
The anniversary programming closes on Friday, October 2 with the Ouray 150th Gala at the Beaumont Hotel & Spa, 7 to 11 p.m., $100 tickets. If you are the kind of resident who usually skips the fundraisers, this one is the marker event for the year.
Where locals actually spend a Tuesday
The out-of-town blog posts about Ouray always default to Box Cañon Falls, the hot springs, and the Perimeter Trail. Those are fine. They are also not what a Tuesday looks like when you already live here. A few things that don't make the tourism lists:
- Bingo at the Ouray Elks Lodge, 421 Main Street, runs 6 to 9 p.m. $10 for ten games.
- Storytime with a firefighter at the Ouray Public Library, 320 Sixth Avenue, for elementary kids on selected Thursday mornings.
- Youth Adventure Days at Ridgway State Park run through summer, with archery for ages 11 to 16 at $10 a session, meeting at Pa-Co-Chu-Puk.
- Ridgway's Fete de la Musique street party, 20 musicians, food trucks, and beer tents across Clinton and Cora streets from 4 p.m. to sundown, if you are willing to make the 25-minute drive down 550.
- First Friday Art Walk in downtown Ridgway, 5 to 8 p.m., free, with openings at the 610 Arts Collective and the Decker Community Room.
What the fall calendar already holds
Two dates worth putting on the fridge before September. The Ouray 150th Gala on October 2 at the Beaumont. And the Love Your Gorge volunteer day, when the Ouray Ice Park teams up with the Uncompahgre Watershed Partnership to clean and prep the gorge before the ice-climbing season begins. It is the least glamorous day on the local calendar and one of the most useful if you care about the gorge holding up under another winter of climbers.
The ice park's programming is a good reminder that the town flips fast. The Mountain Air stage will still be freshly torn down when the first cold nights start settling into the amphitheater. If you have lived here more than a season, you already know how tight the shoulder is between softball's last Friday in mid-August and the first freeze in the gorge.
At Colorado Land Home & Ranch, we work with buyers and sellers across Ouray, Ridgway, and the broader Western Slope, and we spend a lot of our own time on the same trails, at the same concerts, and yes, at the Elks bingo tables. If you own property here and are thinking about your next move, or if you are managing a rental from out of area and want a local team keeping eyes on it, schedule a consultation and let's talk.
