Black Forest Festival

The Black Forest Festival begins in a parking lot before seven in the morning. On festival Saturday the grills are pulled out from under the Black Forest Community Center, a community-built log building at the corner of Black Forest and Shoup Roads, and the pancake breakfast starts at 6:30. The club’s schedule closes it at 9:00, and the Peak Radar listing at 9:30. Volunteers cook and Boy Scout Troop 70, which the Community Club sponsors, serves. In 2025 the plate was pancakes, eggs, sausage, coffee and orange juice, given for donations, and volunteers served around 700 breakfasts. That morning Troop 70 raised the flag at 6:30, and The Ghost of Cash played classic country and hits of the ‘60s through the ‘80s at the Log School Pavilion.

The 2026 festival, on Saturday, August 8, was the 57th. Its theme, “Stars, Stripes and Tall Pines,” marked the 150th anniversary of the State of Colorado and the 250th of the United States. Admission is free. The Black Forest Community Club, a nonprofit social club, runs the day with volunteers. Counts of the crowd differ. The Gazette put it at about 3,000 visitors in 2019. Volunteer Tiffany Coles estimated around 5,000 in 2022. The club says “thousands of people every year.”

Booths, wolves and a beer pavilion

From 8:00 the backyard behind the center fills with the Artisan and Business Booth Fair, and the club’s parking lot with nonprofit and demonstration booths. The club’s 2025 recap counted 90 vendors, from artists and 3D-printers to homemade goods and coffee. Children run their own stalls at the Children’s Entrepreneurial Market, which closes at 2:00. The demonstrations favor rural trades such as wool-spinning. In 2025 the grounds held a petting zoo, alpacas, sheep and wolves: Vogl gave a sheep demonstration, Hidy a honey-bee demonstration, and Wolf Freedom Coffee brought wolves to meet. Tractor rides run in the morning and again from noon. In 2026 the LDS and Lutheran churches ran the children’s games and crafts.

The backyard covers 4.7 acres, and it burned in the 2013 Black Forest fire. In 2022 Coles said festival fundraising was going toward its continued recovery. Picker Munson later cut a new driveway, removed an old water feature, cistern and well, and won back ground lost to erosion. Grading before the 2025 festival made the booth area “more accessible and visually appealing,” the club’s recap said. For 2026 there was more level ground, and a new fence and gates were finished “just in time,” club president Jim Collins wrote. He added that the backyard property is now completely paid off.

The Beer Pavilion pours from 11:00 to 3:00, and in 2026 Raven Wolf was billed there from the end of the parade. The club also calls it the Family Beer Garden. In 2025 it moved to a new spot under the pines. Beer, hard lemonade, seltzers and ciders sold for $5, soft drinks and water for $1, and the AshTonz played acoustic rock, country and pop. Dawn Sciarrotta served brats and hot dogs in 2026. Food trucks park nearby. The 2025 roster ran to Firehouse on the Run, Pies and Grinders, Dr. Taco, Kabob Kaboose, an ice cream truck and a churro trailer.

Most cars stay off the grounds. In 2025 visitors parked at local churches, Edith Wolford Elementary, the Black Forest Bistro and Alecia Munson’s lot. Shuttles from Special Kids Special Families and buses from Academy School District 20 carried them to the festival. A Mountain View Café fundraiser paid for the rides, sparing festival-goers “a long uphill walk.”

The parade on Shoup Road

The parade steps off at 10:30. In 2025 it ran west on Shoup Road, rounded the corner at Black Forest Road, and went north past the Community Center toward Trappers Pass, a route of about a mile to a mile and a half. That year there were nearly 60 entries and around 800 participants: high school bands, cheerleaders, floats, classic cars, motorcycles and tractors, with candy for the children along the way. After the parade a Flight for Life helicopter flew down Black Forest Road and back.

The parade carries each year’s Keepers of the Keys to the Forest. In 2025 Bob and Karen Hilborn drove John and Ginny Trcka. In 2022 it was Robert and Cherie Erler, in a parade of about 70 participants that included live alpacas. The 2026 parade had 49 participants and Sheriff Roybal as grand marshal, and Steve White’s team lined up floats, marching bands, cars and RZRs.

Then the outhouses run. The races begin as soon as the parade ends and cost nothing to enter. KOAA reported that racers spend weeks choosing themes and building wheeled latrines, then make several runs in front of hundreds of festival-goers. Six teams raced in 2022. Black Forest Ward LDS Youth took first and Black Forest Brewing Co. second.

Two outhouses and a watermelon feed

The club traces the races through a source it cites, which dates them to 1976, when Black Forest residents wanted to hold a watermelon feed in a nearby empty lot. “The problem with the site was with all the beer and watermelon that would be consumed, there would be a dire need for toilets.” Someone suggested moving the community center’s two outhouses to the site. KOAA’s version of the same account adds that the outhouses had served the center until a sewer system was installed. Instead of loading them on a trailer, people raced to see who could move them by hand the fastest. The races then apparently disappeared for a time, KOAA says. They came back the weekend of August 12 and 13, 2022, after a two-year absence.

The building those outhouses served is older than the festival. The club was chartered in 1929 as a social organization for families living in the Black Forest north of Colorado Springs. It now counts 224 member families, and by its count the log building turns 100 in 2027. Down Shoup Road at the main intersection stands the Old Log Church. It was built in 1940 of round pine logs from the adjacent forest and dedicated in October 1942 as the first church in Black Forest. At the 2019 festival, contractor Paul Matosky and architect Barbara Darden staffed a display of its repaired logs. Beside them lay the tools used in the repairs, some of the same kinds used to raise the church.

Friday night under the pines

The weekend opens on Friday evening with the Black Forest Biergarten, an adults-only fundraiser. It began in 2019, the year of the theme “Black Forest Strong — 90 years!” That first night meant to “Raise the Roof!” for the community center’s roof fund. Tickets were $20, and Wirewood Station, a Colorado Springs “dancegrass” band, played. In 2022 the fourth Biergarten sold out at 350 tickets. “Even though they ran out of beer, everyone stayed and danced and had a lot of fun!” one anonymous participant said.

The eighth Biergarten ran from 5:00 to 9:00 on Friday, August 7, 2026, at Black Forest Log School Park. Local breweries poured, home brewers gave demonstrations, and Dr Taco and Smokey D’s BBQ sold food. Amore was billed to open, with WireWood Station to follow until 9:00. The Colorado Springs Rugby Club’s Grizzlies have provided security since the first one. The 2026 night raised over $3,000 toward a new digital sign for the club.

A parade nearly lost

In February 2024 Mike House, a Black Forest homeowner and business owner, wrote to the Gazette that the club’s board had cancelled the parade, citing too few volunteers and the cost of insurance. “In my opinion there is nothing more American than a local parade that features and highlights a community,” he wrote. The parade went on that August under a new festival team. In October Shari Conley wrote to the New Falcon Herald that the new volunteers had “stepped up when our traditional parade was on the verge of being cancelled.” She added: “Festival 2024 was one of our best!”