Rainbow Family Pouring Into Montana, 2,200 Already Here

More and more Rainbow family members are flooding into Montana. Rainbow Family Incident Management Team spokeswoman Cass Cairns has been monitoring the influx of people into The Beaverhead-Deerlodge national forest near Dillon and was able to give an on-the-ground report June 27.

"There are quite a few people that have already arrived," said Cairns. "We are looking at about 2,200 people and over 400 vehicles that are already in the gathering area, and of course this weekend we are expecting to get quite a bit more. We don't know for sure what the end number is going to be but it will probably be close to what it was in 2000, and that was over 20,000 people."

Cairnes says there has been some crime, but nothing significant.

"When you have a lot of people coming in like this, there is always more activity, so yes there has been some different unsociable types of activity and there have been actions taken in several cases but there hasn't been anything major and things have been going pretty well"

The area around Dillon is expected to see even more people this weekend as it prepares for the annual Ratpod Race, a bike race fundraiser for Camp-Make a Dream.