PumpkinFest, a family-oriented fall foliage celebration with free live music, square-dancing tractors, pumpkin competitions and more, will be held Friday through Sunday in Confluence, the aptly named small town in southern Somerset County along the banks of the Youghiogheny and Casselman rivers and Laurel Hill Creek.
Maple trees already are showing their early orange, red and yellow autumnal attire. And so are the colorful front windows of the shops and stores in and around the central business district, thanks to the talented art students at the Turkeyfoot Valley Area School District. Large orange pumpkins will be painted in the center of the town’s main intersections.
Afternoon and evening music will be provided by The Laurel, Part-Time Cowboys, Allison Borek, Country Express and Black Diamond Bluegrass in the large white Entertainment Tent adjacent to the block-square town park. The park will be filled with a variety of arts and crafts vendors and bordered by food trucks.
Children’s activities include a Balloon Bounce in the park, Garden Tractor Pull on Logan Place next to the park and pumpkin-carving at the Confluence Creative Arts Center in its front yard on nearby Williams Street. There will be contests for baked goods, pie-eating and largest pumpkins, and hay rides, Tough Man Truck Pull, a 5K run/walk and an antique and classic car show with DJ Johnny Be Good.
“We’ll also have a few surprise events,” said Tom Close, co-chairman of the festival that is sponsored by the Confluence Volunteer Fire Department.
The PumpkinFest Queen, a Turkeyfoot student who will be named and crowned at the school on Thursday, will preside over the three-day Fall Foliage celebration.
The Great Duck Race will be held in the Casselman River if river conditions permit. Four-hundred palm-sized yellow plastic ducks will be dropped from a bridge, catch the current and the race will be on. The first three ducks win cash prizes for their ticket holders and so does the last duck. The next race is to capture each duck before it makes a break for the Youghiogheny River and ultimately the Gulf of Mexico.
The Grand Feature Parade, sponsored by the fire department, will be held at 5 p.m. Sunday. It will include fire trucks from volunteer fire departments in Somerset County and beyond and floats whose occupants will throw candy to spectators that line Oden Street, the town’s main drag. If tradition holds, as it always has, chairs will be put out Sunday morning to save seating spaces along the parade route.
There will be free van shuttles on Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to close from the parking lots of the Turkeyfoot Valley Area School District via Route 523 in Harnedsville and the American Legion along Route 281 in Ursina, each only two miles away.
For more information, visit www.confluencepumpkinfest.com or pick up a festival schedule at the fire department’s green information trailer across from the community center.
First Published: October 5, 2023, 6:57 p.m.
