Pumpkin Festival

On the first Sunday of October, pumpkins and gourds fill LaVanche Hursh Park at Fifth and Hall streets in Arbuckle, a Colusa County town, waiting to be picked and carried home. Local food and craft booths line the park, entertainment runs alongside the vendors, and fall activities are set out for families. The 2026 festival runs Sunday, October 4, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Dogs are part of the program. In the Pumpkins and Pups adoption event, Yolo County Animal Services brings adoptable shelter dogs to the park. The Arbuckle Revitalization Committee, which puts on the festival, announced them as special guests in posts written in English and in Spanish: “Come by, say hello, and you might just meet your new best friend.”

The park and the road past it

The park is the committee’s own work. It is one of three the committee has completed. The others are the Wee Park, which greets visitors at the south end of town, and the Veteran’s Memorial Park, whose flag memorial honors soldiers from the Arbuckle area who died in wartime. The committee calls LaVanche Hursh Community Park “the home of many of our hometown community events.” On July 18, 2026, the park held the town’s 150th celebration, and that night a band called Playback played there until 9 p.m.

Fifth Street runs past the park. The committee worked with Colusa County to have it designated Historic 99W, an official proclamation followed, and markers went up in September 2026. The committee thanked the Historic Highway 99 Association of California for the signs, which recall the road “that preceded Interstate 5 as our California Highway.”

Colusa County pumpkins and two young fiddlers

The Colusa Sun-Herald’s report on the festival of Oct. 1, 2022, gives the fullest account of a festival day. The staples were all there: a vendor fair of 20 vendors, a food truck, games, face painting, and, in reporter Lynzie Lowe’s words, “lots and lots of pumpkins.” Diana Lytal, then president of the committee, said every pumpkin was grown in Colusa County. They came from two suppliers, Martin Fun Farms in Colusa and Karlonas Patch in Williams. The paper’s photograph showed a child playing with bubbles in the pumpkin patch.

The music that year was new. The Fiddlin’ Brothers, Ari and Aven Nercessian of Stonyford, ages 12 and 10, had been touring California playing violin at fairs and festivals. They brought extra instruments so children in the audience could join the show.

Counting the years

Two years earlier, the festival had drawn its largest crowd. The Sun-Herald’s year-end review for 2020 reported that the ninth annual festival was held Oct. 4. Lytal said that edition, which came “after months void of most community events,” was the most attended to date. The same review said the committee had held the festival at the park on the first Sunday of October for almost a decade, to welcome fall and the start of the holiday season.

The count does not hold steady in print. An Appeal-Democrat calendar listing published before the 2022 festival called it the 10th annual. The Sun-Herald’s report afterward called the same Oct. 1 festival the 11th.

The committee’s founding date also varies by source. The committee’s own pages say it was formed in 2002 by a group of citizens who wanted to “Refresh, Restore, and Revitalize the town of Arbuckle.” The 2022 Sun-Herald report gives 2011 as the year it formed. A February 2026 committee post names Elijah Rodriguez as president.

The depot across Fifth Street

Money raised at the festival, along with donations from residents and businesses, goes to the committee’s projects. Chief among them is the train depot. In 2022 the Sun-Herald described restoring the 146-year-old depot, which stands just across the street from the park, as the committee’s primary goal. The work had moved slowly because of its cost. The repairs included moving the entire structure to a new foundation 35 feet from where it stood.

That October, Lytal said the committee had accepted bids for dismantling the depot and laying the foundation. She hoped to finish the dismantling by the end of the month and, weather permitting, the foundation by the end of the year. The committee was also looking into grants. Once the restoration is done, the plan is to use the depot as a community meeting place and museum.

The building had already begun to yield its contents. While preparing it for dismantling, committee members found a woman’s lace-up shoe from the 1920s, old-fashioned nails, railroad ties, and an oil can. Residents donated other pieces, among them a journal from the Arbuckle movie theater. The festival season that year closed with the car show and Depot Birthday celebration on Oct. 30.

A historian working with the committee had matched some well-known train hoppers to the hobo hieroglyphics etched into the depot’s walls. Lytal said those sections of wall will be put on display.