Erie Town Fair

Booths from Briggs to Kattell

On Saturday, May 16, 2026, the 29th Annual Erie Town Fair closed Briggs, Wells, Moffat and Kattell streets in Historic Downtown Erie from 5:30 in the morning until about six in the evening. More than 280 craft, art, food and vendor booths went up on the pavement. The Chamber’s map numbered the spaces from 001 to 308. They ran past Fox Dog, the post office, Lucile’s, Birdhouse Sweets, Azteca, Piripi, the Echo and Old Mine breweries, and a food court. The booths opened at ten and closed at four. The organizers stated that the fair would go on regardless of weather. They warned that the streets had no Wi-Fi and that cell service could fail under the load of the crowd, and they asked that pets stay home. The Chamber described the day as working toward a zero-waste event.

Those streets were dirt until recently. Shavonne Blades, who moved to Erie in 1992, recalled that Briggs and Cheesman were then the only paved streets, and Old Town’s streets were paved in 1999. Erie was founded in 1874 by a group that included Richard van Valkenburg, who named it for his former home of Erie, Pennsylvania. It was a coal town until 1978, when the last load came out of the Eagle Mine. A 2023 Yellow Scene profile of the town recorded Linette Ballew, whose family moved onto land over an old mine northeast of Erie in 1976, among the residents who wanted the fair kept in Old Town.

The Erie Chamber of Commerce runs the fair from its office at 235 Wells Street, inside the closed blocks. Pat Vero, its executive director, wrote to residents and downtown businesses on April 27, 2026, to lay out the closures and the alley route that kept the post office open. Vero thanked them for their “patience and support of our local downtown culture.”

Most visitors did not drive downtown. The Town of Erie and Via Mobility ran two shuttles in a loop from free lots at the Erie Community Center, 450 Powers Street, and Erie High School. The town gave the interval as every 15 to 20 minutes. Erie Bee, the town’s free on-demand service, ran four vehicles instead of its usual two, until 8 p.m. A bike corral stood at Pierce and Wells.

Coal Creek Park until seven

Food trucks lined Coal Creek Park, 575 Kattell Street, between Wells and Cheesman streets from ten to four. Children’s activities ran there from ten until seven. In the park’s parking lot the Garage Rats held their car show from ten to two, and the first row of that lot was set aside for handicap parking.

The beer garden opened at one, and so did the music. The Erie High School Jazz Band played from 1:00 to 1:45, and the Rockin Horse Band from 2:30 to 4:00. When the downtown booths came down, the crowd moved to the park for the headliner, Chris Daniels & The Kings, from five to seven. Kattell between Wells and Cheesman stayed closed until 7:30.

The creek gave the town its first name. Coal was officially documented here in 1866, when the settlement was known unofficially as Coal Park. Jim Baker, the fur trapper and mountain man said to be Erie’s first coal miner, opened a small slope mine called Baker’s Bank on the west bank of Coal Creek near present-day Old Town in 1858. It proved unprofitable within a year.

Polish pottery and a Lamborghini

For years the fair’s mornings belonged to hot air balloons. In 2026 the balloons flew on their own weekend, July 10 to 12, at the 28th Annual Erie Balloon Festival, with a glow on the evening of July 11.

At the 2009 fair the balloons stayed on the ground. The Daily Camera reported that high winds canceled the Saturday launch. A reader answered in the comments that the cause was a low ceiling: clouds at about 500 feet, rain and mist, with calm winds at the airport. The weather cleared by nine, too late to launch, though volunteer pilots flew Young Eagle flights from the airport. Organizers scheduled another attempt for 6:30 the next morning.

The vendors had been on the streets for hours by then. Ginger Pokrant, who sold imported Polish pottery, arrived at 6:45 with her 13-year-old daughter, Gretchen, to help. They had come for a few years. “We come back to this (festival) cause we like the people,” she said. Wendy Harper and Becky Threadgold drove down from Greeley with their homemade soap on someone’s recommendation. “They said, ‘Come try it out,’” Threadgold said.

About 200 vendors sold sunglasses, leather wallets and homemade goods, and a propeller plane stood on display. The car show drew some of the biggest crowds, with about 50 cars: Chevrolets, Fords, Pontiacs and a Lamborghini, some new and some collector’s cars from as far back as the 1930s. Bill Fletcher, a founding member of the Garage Rats, said of the show: “It’s just a kick. I love cars.”

Elle Cabbage, then executive director of the Chamber, said the fair “usually attracts around 20,000 people throughout the day.” Dan Cohen came with his wife, Julie, and their two young children. “I think it’s good to just bring people out and see bubbles and people dressed up in animal costumes and food on a stick, you know, what’s bad about that?” he said.

Grounded at the golf course

Before dawn on May 19, 2012, children still in their pajamas stood with a crowd of about 200 at Colorado National Golf Club to watch the fair’s balloon launch. At about 6:10 a.m., Chamber president Sandy Hutzly told them it was off. “Due to the weather, it’s just not safe for our pilots to go up today,” she said. “But tomorrow we’ll be going up.” The children were taken home to bed.

The call belonged to Steve Hunter, the fair’s balloonmeister, who grounded 30 balloonists after reading the forecasts. No rain had fallen on the course yet. Hunter pointed west at the weather. “In front of that, you can get wind,” he said. “You can be 12 miles away and get 15 mile per hour wind from that, and you won’t know until you’re in the air.” Rain was the other danger, because a wet envelope loses its porosity coating and sheds heat. “If you pack a balloon up wet, they say you have three days to dry it out before you’ll have some real problems,” Hunter said.

Showers fell through the day on the car show, the vendors and the children’s activities downtown. Late in the afternoon the sky cleared in time for the headliner, FACE, at Coal Creek Park and for the evening glow. Four pilots inflated their balloons and let spectators look into the baskets and pull the burner triggers. One of them was Raul Oliva of Hotchkiss. “The glows are for the community,” he said. “That’s when kids and families come out, so it’s important to put on a good show.”

Mark Whiting, a Denver balloonist with 14 years at the Erie launch, looked ahead to the Sunday flight. “They always say, ‘Never fly in front of a front.’ But after a front, for about 24 hours, pilots call it ‘severe clear.’ That’s what we live for.”