Elkton Autumn Days Turns Forty, and It Keeps Adding Streets

A lifelong Elkton-area man who was working the grill for Mt. Paran Baptist Church at a recent Autumn Days told the Daily News-Record he remembers the festival when it was small enough to fit on the street in front of Elkton Elementary School. "It used to be over by the elementary school. That's how long I've been going," he said. That same year, vendors were set up on West Spotswood Avenue and, for the first time, along Warren Street too.

Autumn Days returns Saturday and Sunday, October 17 and 18, 2026. The festival began in 1987, and Visit Rockingham called the 2025 edition the 39th annual. That count makes next weekend the 40th, although the organizers haven't used that number on their own page yet. What 40 years have built is the town's largest event, and the town doesn't run it. A volunteer committee does, and it has added streets on purpose.

From One Block to Warren Street

The Daily News-Record covered what it called the largest Autumn Days to date, the year the festival first spread onto Warren Street. "It always seems to be bigger and bigger each year," Elkton Mayor Joshua Gooden told the paper. "This Warren Street is all brand new. We used to not have vendors there, and we added probably about 10 on this end. It ended up, in total, being 30 more [vendor] spaces than we have ever had before."

The mayor put that year's total at about 165 vendors, with most of them on Spotswood Avenue. For comparison, the 2023 listing for the 37th annual festival advertised more than 100 arts-and-crafts vendors and over a dozen food vendors along West Spotswood Avenue, with free music. The two figures count vendors differently, so they don't line up exactly. Both describe a festival that has outgrown one street. Its first home, the block by the elementary school, would hold only a small part of either.

On Warren Street that year, vendors sold jewelry, crocheted animals, laser-cut suncatchers and wooden earrings. An Elkton artist selling there told the paper she hadn't been sure how the new street would work out, "But everyone has spread out well, and the crowd has just kind of moved through." When a festival grows, the hard part is the route, and adding a side street spread the crowd out instead of packing more of it onto Spotswood.

The Committee Behind It Since 1987

Autumn Days comes from the Elkton Progressive Improvement Committee, known as EPIC. The group formed in 1987 to improve residents' quality of life, and its work includes community projects, public spaces and support for local businesses. Autumn Days started in EPIC's first year and, in the Daily News-Record's words, "quickly blossomed into the town's biggest event of the year."

EPIC describes Autumn Days as an annual downtown festival held on the third weekend in October, with local arts and crafts, food and live music. The festival is also one stop on a full-year calendar the committee keeps.

Over the year, the committee's events move across town, from Elkton Landing to Blue Ridge Park and then back downtown. The two fall events both sit on West Spotswood Avenue, which puts the weeks from mid-October to early November closer to downtown than any other stretch of the year.

What the Booths Pay For

A lot of what's sold at Autumn Days funds something else. In the year the Daily News-Record covered, Mt. Paran Baptist Church in Elkton sold hot dogs, chips and water to help pay for a new roof on its building. The church was trying to raise about $28,400 for the replacement, and the paper reported a steady stream of customers from midday on. The man at the grill said he'd been there since about 11 and thought they were "doing pretty well."

Some of the paper's other names from that year:

• Kettle corn. The mayor called the kettle corn stand a staple and "the most popular booth by far."
• Grown-Up Punk Publications. A new booth run by Harrisonburg author Amber Showalter, selling poetry books and candles, each candle named for one of her poems.
• Brenda's pimento cheese, the soda truck and Lucky Duck popcorn. These were the favorites named by a longtime Elkton vendor.
• A children's area with face painting. It sat alongside the craft, food and drink booths while a band played.

These details come from a past festival. EPIC hasn't published a 2026 vendor list, band lineup or children's schedule. Last year's booths are a good guide to the festival's character, but they don't promise who will set up on October 17.

Planning the Weekend

Here is what the official pages say for 2026, including the places where they disagree:

1. Start time. The Town of Elkton calendar shows a 10 a.m. start on Saturday, October 17. In 2025 the hours were 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. No 2026 closing times have been posted.
2. Address. EPIC lists the festival at 158 W. Spotswood Ave. The town calendar's map link points to 173 W. Spotswood Ave. The two numbers are on the same downtown stretch, and the event covers more than one street anyway.
3. Questions. EPIC takes festival and vendor questions at [email protected].

A few downtown stops are open around the festival. Unearthed Homestead, a tea room and wellness shop at 306 Spotswood Trail, opened in January 2026, WHSV reported. It's open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., so it overlaps with both festival days. That makes this the first Autumn Days with the tea room in business downtown.

Elkton Brewing Co. is at 100 N. Fifth Street. Its regular hours are 1 to 10 p.m. Saturday and 1 to 6 p.m. Sunday, which run well past the 2025 festival hours. Those are the brewery's usual hours, not a special festival schedule. The Elkton Historical Society also holds regular history-themed events at the brewery, and it offers Sunday open-house tours and talks at the Miller-Kite House. The society hasn't posted specific dates for this fall.

Three Weeks Later, Same Street

EPIC's last event of 2026 is the Chili Cook-Off on Saturday, November 7, from 1 to 4 p.m., at 158 W. Spotswood Ave. Chili teams and vendors register through [email protected]. The 2025 cook-off was held on November 1 at the same address, about two weeks after that year's Autumn Days.

This year the gap is three weeks. The cook-off is shorter, an afternoon instead of a weekend, and it doesn't need Warren Street. It runs on the same downtown block as Autumn Days, with the same volunteer committee and the same email-based signup. After that, EPIC has no events posted until the beer and wine festival comes back to Elkton Landing in the spring.

If the 40th Autumn Days has you wondering how downtown Elkton and the streets around it have changed, the agents at Nest Realty Harrisonburg are glad to talk through what we're seeing in eastern Rockingham County, festival weekend or not.