Work Pants, a Cow Pasture Festival and $210,000 in Grants: Red Ants Pants Turns 20
Sarah Calhoun opened Red Ants Pants in White Sulphur Springs in October 2006. Twenty years on, the women's workwear company also runs a music festival and a rural foundation.
A clothing company that sells to customers across the country does not usually pick a Meagher County ranching town of under a thousand people as its home. Red Ants Pants did, and this month it marks 20 years there. The Montana Statesman looked back at the company's two decades on Main Street in White Sulphur Springs. Here are the parts of that story that stand out from a business point of view.
A product gap, not a cause
Sarah Calhoun grew up on a farm in rural Connecticut and was drawn to Montana partly by Ivan Doig's memoir This House of Sky, set in the sheep country around White Sulphur Springs. She has said she was not setting out to make a feminist statement. She simply could not find work pants that fit women well, so she made them.
The store opened on Oct. 8, 2006, at 206 E. Main St., in an old saddle shop. The pants are canvas and denim, cut for women and offered in a wide spread of waist and inseam sizes, and they are made in the United States. Before the brand was known, Calhoun drove around Montana selling pants from the back of an Airstream trailer.
The name is a nod to biology. In an ant colony, Calhoun has pointed out, the females do the work.
Three businesses under one name
The clothing line is only one piece. In 2011 Calhoun launched two more ventures:
- The Red Ants Pants Music Festival, held every July in a cow pasture outside town, with country, folk and Americana acts. The 15th edition ran July 23 to 26, 2026. It was named Event of the Year in 2018, and each summer it fills campgrounds, cafes and motels in a town that usually sees far less traffic.
- The Red Ants Pants Foundation, which backs women's leadership, working family farms and ranches, and small towns. It has given more than $210,000 to projects in about 100 rural communities and made 20 grants in 2026. Its Girls Leadership Program, now in its eighth year, held its Eastern Montana retreat May 8 to 10 in Miles City.
Customers who stayed
One longtime buyer, Carah Ronan of Rodi Farm, a flower farm south of Laurel, bought her first pair in 2008 and told the Billings Gazette she has 17 years of them in her closet. She also attended a women in agriculture retreat the company hosted in the winter of 2024. Ronan credits the festival with helping revive White Sulphur Springs, saying the town once felt shut down and now has places to eat, new shops and a brewery.
Awards along the way
Calhoun was named Montana's Entrepreneur of the Year in 2011. The U.S. Small Business Administration called her its National Women in Business Champion in 2012, and she entered the Montana Business Hall of Fame in 2018.
What other small-town founders can take from it
- Start with a need you know firsthand. The company began with a problem its founder had herself.
- A remote address can work with mail order. The headcount stayed small while orders came from far away.
- Events and giving can build the brand. The festival and foundation put the name in front of people who might never shop for workwear.
The storefront is still open on Main Street, and the pants are sold online at redantspants.com.
Originally reported by The Montana Statesman. Read the full story: Twenty years of Red Ants Pants on Main Street in White Sulphur Springs.
