The second weekend of September is the one weekend a year when the fastest way across Ellettsville is on foot. Temperance Street closes. Sale Street closes. Traffic bends around Marci Jane Lewis Park while the parade steps off from Edgewood High School and a couple thousand neighbors settle into lawn chairs on Park Street. If you live here, you already know the festival is coming. What follows is the map underneath it: where the road actually closes, how the Karst Farm Greenway becomes the smartest way into town that Saturday, and which tables on the west side are worth booking before or after.
The dates, and what changes at street level
The 2026 Monroe County Fall Festival runs September 10th, 11th, and 12th at Marci Jane Lewis Park on South Park Street. Programming is the shape locals expect: two stages of local music, roughly 16 food trucks, 35 craft vendors and 40 commercial vendors, a queen contest, baby contest, car show, parade, circus thrill show, mechanical bull, and axe throwing. Butler Winery and Upland Brewing have been fixtures in recent years, and the Upland tent typically runs 4:30–9 pm on Friday and Saturday.
For anyone who has lived here longer than a season, the piece that actually matters is Saturday morning. The parade is the reason your usual route through town stops working.
Here's the pattern the Ellettsville Police Department has published in past years, which is worth checking against their announcement the week of the event:
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Parade lineup | Edgewood High School, staging from about 7:30 am |
| Route | North on Edgewood Drive to Temperance Street, then east on Temperance to Paul Street |
| Judges' stage | Southeast corner of Sale Street and Temperance Street |
| Typical closure window | Temperance between the east and west splits; Sale Street between Temperance and Vine |
| Workaround | Main Street runs two-way during the closure; Vine Street stays open east–west |
On past parade Saturdays, Temperance Street has closed between the east and west splits, Main Street has run two-way during that time, Sale Street has closed between Temperance and Vine, and Vine Street has stayed open in both directions. If you live south of Temperance and need to get to Spencer during the closure, the old workaround still applies: go past Hartstrait Road, turn around, and come back westbound.
Start times drift year to year. Recent schedules have had the festival running Thursday 5–9 pm, Friday 5–10 pm, and Saturday 11:30 am–10 pm, with the Saturday parade stepping off at 10:00 am. Confirm against the festival's own page the week of, because the parade has stepped off as late as noon in prior years.
Skip the parking problem entirely
If you live in one of the subdivisions north of SR 46 or anywhere within a mile of Campbells Park, driving to the festival on Saturday is the wrong move. The Karst Farm Greenway is.
The Karst Farm Greenway is a fully paved trail that begins at Karst Farm Park and extends over 7 miles north to Campbells Park in the Town of Ellettsville, with trailheads at Karst Farm Park, Loesch Road, and Campbells Park. From Campbells Park you're a short walk to South Park Street and the festival grounds. The greenway does the two things driving can't during parade hours: it bypasses every closed street, and it drops you within a block of the food trucks without a parking search.
It also flips the geography of the weekend. Most of the year the greenway is the recreational thing you do on a Sunday morning. That Saturday it's the functional route into downtown. Families with kids on bikes, dogs on leashes, and grandparents on the golf-cart-style pedal setups all use it the same way. Traffic on Temperance is somebody else's problem.
If you're using the greenway that weekend, worth knowing:
- The trail connects to Karst Farm Park, which has its own draws that weekend. Karst Farm Park has three playgrounds and a splash pad, plus disc golf if you're stretching the day out on the south end.
- Karst Farm Park was the first county park established, created in 1969 after the county closed its poor farm; the name refers to the karst topography and the property's history as the County Poor Farm. Sinkholes are visible from the trail if you look for them.
- The park is generally open dawn to dusk, with facility hours like the splash pad varying seasonally, so if you're planning a post-festival cool-down on Saturday afternoon, check hours before you commit.
The new table on State Road 46
The most useful piece of local news for anyone planning meals around the festival is the one that opened in March. Don Chuy Mexican Restaurant is a new, family-run Mexican restaurant that opened at 5621 W. State Road 46, previously occupied by Chicago's Pizza. The owners are brothers Jesús, Antonio and Cristian Vargas and their brother-in-law Juan Carlos Delgado, and the regular menu features traditional Mexican cuisine including tamales, chimichangas, and quesabirria. The name is a tribute to the brothers' father, Jesús "Don Chuy" Vargas, who was a chef in Mexico; in Spanish "Don" is an honorific and "Chuy" is a common nickname for people named Jesús.
The address itself is worth noting because it's a familiar one. Anyone who lived here five years ago has picked up a pizza in that same building. The restaurant slot on that stretch of 46 has changed hands, but it's the same drive from the Cedar Chase or Grandview Estates subdivisions, and the same easy stop on the way home from the festival.
Around Don Chuy, the rest of the Ellettsville table map is what it has been. The regulars, in no particular order:
- The Hawaiian Hoosier for Hawaiian-inflected snacks and the kind of small talk with owner Stacie that reminds you why you live in a town of six-thousand-something
- Hoosier Bar & Grill for a smash burger before the Friday night music
- The Caffeinated Cook for scones and coffee before the Saturday parade
- Pizza Pantry if you're feeding a group and don't want to think about it
- Village Inn Family Restaurant for a Sunday breakfast that lets the weekend wind down slowly
- Jiffy Treet West for the walk-up cone on the way home
The specific test of a good local roundup is whether it names the places you'd name to a friend. If any of these six aren't in your rotation, they should be.
The festival itself, without the tourist framing
A quick honest read for people who've been going for years: the festival is genuinely a town event, not a tourist event. It's home to the Monroe County Fall Festival, a homecoming of sorts for anyone who has had the privilege of calling Ellettsville home; the festival dates from 1932 and, after starting as a Richland Township 4-H fair and going countywide with Ellettsville's 1937 centennial, has been held annually since being revived in 1987. The queen coronation on Thursday, the parade on Saturday, and the way the food-truck row on Park Street fills with people you actually know are the reasons long-time residents block the weekend off before school starts.
The practical implication for anyone hosting family from out of town: this is the weekend to bring them. It answers the "what do people do here" question better than any single dinner reservation could. Park at Campbells, walk in on the greenway, hit the parade, cross the road to Marci Jane Lewis Park for the food trucks, and end at Don Chuy or Village Inn depending on the crowd.
Weekend outline, for the people who want one
Because the schedule reads better as a plan than as a list of items:
- Thursday evening: Family Night on the main stage, including the queen and court coronation. Lighter crowds, easier parking, best night if you have small kids who don't love the Saturday density.
- Friday evening: Two stages running until 10, Upland tent open from 4:30–9, food-truck row at full strength. This is the night to eat at the festival.
- Saturday morning: Parade at 10 am from Edgewood High School. Park at Campbells and walk in. Do not try to cross Temperance in a car between about 9:45 and 11:30.
- Saturday afternoon: Karst Farm Park splash pad and playgrounds if you have kids ready to burn off cotton candy, or the festival craft tent if you don't.
- Sunday: Wind-down brunch or breakfast at Village Inn or The Caffeinated Cook, greenway ride if the weather holds, and back to the festival grounds for the closing stage program.
Two decades of showing families around Ellettsville has taught me one thing about this weekend: the residents who enjoy it most are the ones who plan the route, not the schedule. The parade will run whether you catch the first float or the fifteenth. The greenway is what makes the whole thing painless.
If you or someone in your circle is thinking about a move within Ellettsville, a downsize into town, or listing the family home before the school year settles in, that same route-first thinking applies to real estate here. Amanda Sells Indiana is the local practice of Amanda Richardson, and every conversation starts the same way this weekend does: with the map. Schedule a Free Consultation when you're ready to talk through yours.
