Ticonderoga's Fall Calendar Has Two Layers This Year, and One Won't Repeat

At noon on September 26, the Ticonderoga Area Farmers Market set up somewhere it doesn't normally go. For one Saturday only, vendors moved into Percy Thompson Bicentennial Park instead of their usual spot, folded into the afternoon half of FallFest alongside a pumpkin bounce house, wagon rides, and live music from Kait MD. By evening the same park had turned over to a 21-and-older crowd for a beer garden with a five-dollar donation at the gate, a scannable ID check at the door, and last call at 7:30. That kind of swap, a market rerouted for one day, a park that does double duty as family event and beer garden, is the ordinary texture of a Ticonderoga fall. It happens most years.

What's still to come this fall is not most years.

Ticonderoga sits at the north end of Lake George, where the LaChute River carries water down from Lake Champlain, and the town's outdoor season usually closes the way most Adirondack towns close theirs: a harvest festival, a corn maze, a Halloween weekend, then quiet. This year, a second calendar is running underneath the first one, timed to a date on the historical record that won't come back around for another two and a half centuries. Knowing where the two calendars overlap, and where they don't, is the difference between catching something once-only and assuming it'll still be there next October.

The Town's Own Rhythm

FallFest is now in its ninth year, organized by the Ticonderoga Montcalm Street Partnership working with the Ticonderoga Area Chamber of Commerce. The format has settled into a pattern locals can set a clock by: family programming and a farmers market in the early afternoon, then a shift toward music and a beer garden once the sun starts to drop. This is the town's own event, built and run by downtown business owners and volunteers, and it exists independent of anything happening a few miles south at the fort. It's the baseline. Everything else this fall stacks on top of it.

The Fort Starts Its Own Season

Fort Ticonderoga runs on its own calendar too, and it opens its fall programming on October 3 with the Heritage, Harvest & Horse Festival. The day centers on the King's Garden and its heritage apple orchard, with demonstrations built around the working animals, oxen included, that would have been part of daily life on the site in the 18th century. A farmers market runs alongside it with local food, beverages, and crafts, distinct from the one downtown.

The festival's other draw is the Heroic Corn Maze, six acres cut into a new design for 2026 built around specific 1775 and 1776 episodes, including the covert scouting missions to Montreal and the Noble Train of Artillery's haul to Boston. The maze was named a 2026 USA Today 10Best Readers' Choice pick for Best Corn Maze in America, which is a notable thing for a fort-run agricultural attraction to win against theme parks and commercial farms built for exactly that competition. In its report on the festival, I LOVE NY quoted Fort Ticonderoga president and CEO Beth Hill describing the day as a chance for visitors to connect with the site's history and "participate in the many activities we have on site for all ages and interests."

This is the fort's normal fall closer. In most years, it would be the last major date on the calendar before the site starts winding down for winter.

Where the Two Calendars Collide

This year is not most years, because October 28 marks 250 years since American forces held Ticonderoga against a British push south from Canada, a stand that kept the fight for independence alive into 1777. Fort Ticonderoga is marking the anniversary with a two-day Signature Event called Hold the Line for Liberty on October 24 and 25, part of what the fort is calling its Real Time Revolution season, timed to put visitors on the same ground in the same season, 250 years later.

There's a detail in the historical record worth sitting with. October 28, 1776, is also the exact date that George Washington's army lost the Battle of White Plains, a couple hundred miles south. One army fell that day. Another, at Ticonderoga, held. The fort's anniversary programming is built around that second outcome, and it's not a date that repeats on a useful human timescale. Nobody currently living in Ticonderoga will see the 300th.

That weekend also lands inside HalloweenFest, the town's own event running October 23 through 31. So for one specific stretch, a resident has both the town's Halloween programming and the fort's 250th anniversary weekend on the calendar. Most years carry three recurring events across the fall. This year carries those three plus a fourth that exists because of a date on a calendar from 1776, not because anyone scheduled it that way on purpose.

Here's how the fall calendar lays out:

• September 26 – Ticonderoga Area FallFest, Percy Thompson Bicentennial Park (held September 26)
• October 3 – Fort Ticonderoga's Heritage, Harvest & Horse Festival, King's Garden and the Heroic Corn Maze
• October 23 to 31 – HalloweenFest, town-wide
• October 24 to 25 – Hold the Line for Liberty, Fort Ticonderoga's 250th anniversary Signature Event

Four dated events inside five weeks, one of which is not on a recurring schedule at all.

The Boat That Ends Its Season Regardless

Fort Ticonderoga also runs the Carillon, a 60-foot tour boat that carries visitors out onto Lake Champlain for narrated cruises past the fort's historic ground. Its last outing of the year is billed as the Bon Voyage Cruise, a foliage run before the boat, in the fort's own phrasing, charts its course south for the winter. That's a closure that happens every year without exception. The lake freezes, the season ends, the boat goes into storage, and it comes back the following spring exactly where it left off.

That's the useful contrast to hold next to the anniversary weekend. The Carillon's shutdown is routine. It will happen again next October, and the October after that, on a schedule the fort controls. Hold the Line for Liberty is not on that kind of schedule. It exists because 1776 plus 250 equals 2026, an equation that only works this one time. Treating both as equally "seasonal" is the mistake a generic fall guide would make. One is weather. The other is arithmetic that doesn't repeat.

What This Means for the Rest of Fall

None of this requires planning a trip. Everyone reading this already lives close enough to the LaChute, the King's Garden, or Montcalm Street that these are Saturday decisions, not vacations. But the decision this particular fall carries a little more weight than usual. Missing FallFest meant missing a Saturday you'll get another shot at next September. Skipping the weekend of October 24 costs you something that was scheduled two and a half centuries in advance and will not be rescheduled.

The corn maze will likely get a new design again next year. The farmers market's move to Bicentennial Park was for one Saturday. The Carillon will be back on the water in the spring. October 24 and 25, 2026, will not be back.

Davies-Davies & Associates keeps an eye on what's actually happening around Lake George and the Southern Adirondacks each season, not just what's for sale in it. If you want the next seasonal rundown before it's already half over, Davies-Davies & Associates Real Estate LLC is a good place to check in.