Glendale Folk & Heritage Festival

Each spring the lawns and porches of Sahuaro Ranch Historic Park, at 9802 N. 59th Ave. in Glendale, fill with ukuleles, autoharps, cowboy poets, and storytellers. The 2026 Folk & Heritage Festival ran Saturday, February 28, and Sunday, March 1, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day. It had hundreds of performers on seven stages of music, dance, and storytelling, along with artisan and cultural vendors and a lineup of food trucks. Admission is free. The City of Glendale’s Special Events team produces it.

The stages are the ranch’s own buildings and grounds. At the festival’s thirtieth-year edition, Ted Ramirez, a state Culturekeeper and Tucson’s Official Troubadour, sang from the Foreman’s Porch on Saturday, March 2. On March 4, 2023, Ronee Stoltzberg performed original songs from the Guest House Porch, and Igor Glenn and others led a folk percussion workshop on the Pump House Lawn. That year the festival also used the adjacent Main Library at 5959 W. Brown St. Between the scheduled sets, groups of musicians gather and play wherever there is room, and crowds gather to listen. There is some seating, and the city has advised visitors to bring lawn chairs or picnic blankets.

The festival has grown a stage at a time. The Glendale Daily Planet counted more than 400 performers on five stages at the thirtieth-year festival. For 2023 the city announced more than 400 performers on six stages, while the Arizona Songwriters Association put the count at over 300 performers, drawn from around the country. The program draws on what the Daily Planet called Arizona’s heritage of ranching, mining, and railroading, which it presents through folk and bluegrass music, cowboy poetry, and storytelling.

Spoons, saws, and an instrument petting zoo

Much of the weekend is meant to be played as well as heard. The workshop areas have taught spoons, saws, ukuleles, harmonicas, swing guitar, pennywhistle, jug band, skiffle music, and autoharps, all free. At the thirtieth-year festival, Eric Ramsey, a two-time winner of the AZ Blues Showdown, taught tips and tricks for slide guitar. In 2023 the Arizona Songwriters Association ran a “Songwriters in the Round” workshop, led by Randy Brown, from noon to 2 p.m. on Sunday, March 5. On the same grounds, Barbara Giamalvo has sung and played autoharp with Jim Marchbanks on guitar. She began the Autoharp Club and sits on the Folk & Heritage committee.

Children have the Bookmans Musical Instrument “Petting Zoo,” a space stocked with everything from percussion to string instruments that the Daily Planet called “a noisy and fun experience for all ages.” That paper reported it as new at the thirtieth-year festival, and the city called it a returning favorite in 2023. There has also been face painting, along with arts and crafts led by the artist Kristine Kolache.

Painters inside the city limits

On the festival Saturday, painters work outdoors anywhere within Glendale’s city limits, in oil, watercolor, acrylic, or pastel. Each painting must be finished and framed that same day. In 2023, thirty-two artists took part, and members of the City Council judged the work near the Fruit Packing Shed between 3:00 and 3:30 p.m. Igal Kogan took first place, Michael Feather second, and Charolette Moore third, for a view of the Catlin Court alley behind the Pink Door Tea House. The Heritage Award went to Jef Leber, who painted the GFWC Glendale Woman’s Club building. For 2026 the city set the purses at $1,000, $700, and $400, with another $1,000 for the Heritage Award.

Rancho del Sahuaro

“Our annual Folk and Heritage Festival brings people from around the Valley to one of the most historic areas in our city,” Mayor Jerry P. Weiers said ahead of the 2026 festival.

The Glendale Arizona Historical Society tells the ranch’s story. William Henry Bartlett, born in Peoria, Illinois, in 1850, was a commodities broker. As an investment he bought 640 acres west of present-day Phoenix under the Desert Land Act of 1877, at an initial $0.25 an acre and another $1.00 an acre once the land was deeded. He named it Rancho del Sahuaro. The first building was the Adobe House, raised in 1887 for Stephen Campbell, the first superintendent. The fruit-packing house followed in 1891, where figs and other fruit grown on the ranch were dried and packed for distant markets. The Main House went up in 1895 for the second superintendent, Harry Adams, and his wife.

In 1898 the Bartletts’ son Willie was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and the family moved to Arizona so that the dry air might cure him. Bartlett hired the Chicago architect J. L. Silsbee, an early employer of Frank Lloyd Wright, to design the Guest House. It was finished in 72 days, with seven bedrooms, five bathrooms, a full basement, and a coal-fired boiler that sent steam to radiators in every room. The first wedding at the ranch took place in 1899. The last building, the Foreman’s House of 1900, was designed to look like a colonial farmhouse and housed the ranch hands.

The ranch was sold off in pieces over the years. In 1972 the City of Glendale bought the last 80 acres and set aside 17 of them as a historical area. The Guest House is now home to the historical society, and the Foreman’s House holds offices for park staff. Bartlett’s own line survives on the society’s page: “You will always find a hearty welcome at Rancho del Sahuaro.”

From Faith Petric’s living room

The festival began with Lon Austin. Sun Life Magazine reports that he grew up in the 1950s on Zane Grey adventure stories. His own site says that in high school in the 1960s he bought a guitar to copy the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul and Mary. He found he couldn’t match their voices, so he took up Woody Guthrie’s songs. Gail Gardner’s cowboy poem “Tyin’ Knots In The Devil’s Tail” drew him further toward cowboy songs and verse. In San Francisco he sat in on Faith Petric’s Friday night folk gatherings in her living room.

According to the Glendale Daily Planet, those jams gave him the idea for a free folk festival open to players of every level. As Parks and Recreation Coordinator in Phoenix, he started one at Encanto Park, modeled on the festival Warren Miller had created in Prescott. That festival grew and moved to Sahuaro Ranch. Austin’s site credits him separately with the Encanto Park coffeehouse, which eventually gave rise to The Mexican Beaded Lizard Band. It also credits him with the Phoenix Folk Traditions Music Festival and with establishing the Glendale festival. Sun Life Magazine dates the Glendale festival to 1989, and the 2023 edition was billed as the 33rd annual.

Andy Hurlbut’s part is told two ways. The city’s 2023 announcement called her the festival’s co-founder. The Glendale Daily Planet called her a performer and the festival’s volunteer coordinator. As a girl she sang into a garden hose for a microphone. Later she and Austin wrote songs and sang together, and she performed with the Artichoke Sisters Trio and the Improbable Quartet. She died the August before the 2023 festival, and that year’s festival was dedicated to her. “Her endless dedication and love for this festival is forever imprinted on it,” the program notes read.

On January 31, 2026, Austin was photographed at the Glendale Public Library, resting before his set at the 29th annual Arizona Songwriters Gathering. A month later, at 81, he was under the weather and did not take part in the 2026 festival.