On the morning of September 19, a mat Pilates class wrapped up in Triangle Park just as the first food truck opened its window. By noon, Moana and Spider-Man were posing for photos under the same trees while a tie-dye station spilled out into the Wells Fargo lot next door. Kids were already comparing puzzle pieces for the Scarecrow Trail before anyone had picked a favorite food truck, and by evening the Emmaus Theatre was dark and full for a free screening of The Goonies. All of it happened within a two-block radius of downtown, and none of it required a car.
That was the Farewell to Summer Festival, and this year it grew. The Emmaus Main Street Partners, working with the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce, expanded the event's footprint into the borough-owned Wells Fargo parking lot for the first time, adding room for a Touch-a-Truck experience run by the Emmaus Fire and Police Departments and a free tie-dye station sponsored by Active Learning Centers. More than 50 local vendors and food trucks filled the rest of the route between Triangle Park and Main Street.
Hayden Rinde, manager of the Emmaus Main Street Partners, put it plainly when the expansion was announced: "The Farewell to Summer Festival is more than an event, it's a celebration of community." The festival has run for years. What changed in 2026 was that the park itself stopped being big enough to hold it.
A Festival That Outgrew Its Own Park
The Farewell to Summer Festival has always centered on Triangle Park, the small green wedge at the top of Main Street where the borough's Farmers' Market also sets up. This year's 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. run kept that anchor but pushed outward for the first time into the adjacent lot, a sign that a decade of steady attendance had finally outpaced the available square footage.
The programming leaned into that extra space rather than just filling it. The Scarecrow Trail, sponsored by United Federal Credit Union, sent visitors from Triangle Park into downtown storefronts to collect puzzle pieces and build a completed trail passport, with finished passports entered into a raffle for $50 in local gift cards. The Goonies screening at Emmaus Theatre was underwritten by three separate local sponsors: Edward Jones through Jeff McElhaney, Ambler Savings Bank, and First Commonwealth Federal Credit Union. Even the 11 a.m. Pilates class had a name attached to it, Alchemize Pilates, rather than sitting on the schedule as generic programming.
None of this reads like a festival trying to reinvent itself. It reads like one that ran out of room in the same spot it has always used, and solved that problem by borrowing the parking lot next door instead of moving somewhere new.
The Parade That Never Left Downtown
A month later, the same blocks host a very different kind of gathering. The Emmaus Halloween Parade traces its roots to a Borough Council meeting on October 20, 1919, when the burgess reported he hadn't yet organized a Halloween parade but would appoint a committee if Council wanted one. By 1921 the American Legion had formally taken on the job. Over a century later, the parade still runs through the same tangle of residential streets that shaped it from the start.
This year's parade steps off at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, October 17, following its long-standing route: starting at Keystone and Ridge Streets, heading west on Ridge to 6th, turning onto Walnut and continuing to 9th, then south on 9th to Chestnut, east on Chestnut to Main, and back to Keystone Avenue. Along the way, the Xfinity Food Truck Court sets up in the borough parking lot on Main Street between 3rd and 4th, and St. Margaret's Church, at Keystone and Elm, sells refreshments the night of the parade to benefit Groceries Plus Food Bank at Bethel Bible Church.
That refreshment stand is a small detail, but it says something about how the parade sustains itself. It isn't chamber-sponsored the way the summer festival is. It runs on a volunteer committee, division captains in orange vests, and a network of churches and community groups that have kept showing up since long before anyone thought to hire a marketing firm.
A 5K That Finishes Where the Parade Starts
The evening now includes a second event that didn't always exist alongside it. The Halloween in Emmaus 5K Race begins at 9th Street and Green Street and finishes at Triangle Park, timed to wrap up just as the parade steps off. Race day logistics for 2026 include:
- Race start: 6:30 p.m., parade start: 7:00 p.m.
- Awards for the top three overall finishers, male and female, plus age group awards from 8 and under through 60 and older
- Costume awards judged separately, with categories posted on the race's Facebook page
- Packet pickup at Keystone Running Store in Allentown on Friday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., with a second Saturday window from 4:45 to 6:10 p.m. at the Emmaus High School Annex Lot
Proceeds benefit both the Emmaus Parks system and the parade itself, which means the run isn't a bolted-on fitness event competing for the same evening. It's built to feed directly into what follows it. Runners finish in the same park where the summer festival's Pilates class started the season, and twenty minutes later the parade's food trucks and church refreshment stand take over the same stretch of Main Street.
Two Ways of Paying for the Same Two Blocks
Line up the sponsor lists side by side and the difference is obvious. The Farewell to Summer Festival's backers read like a chamber of commerce roster: Kent Electrical Supply, Burkholder's Heating & Air Conditioning, New Tripoli Bank, Gross McGinley, Raymond James, HighStreet Insurance, McDonald's of Emmaus. These are businesses paying to put their names on a daytime event built around vendors and family activities.
The parade runs on something else entirely. Its award categories go to Anna's Goblins, Summit Lawn Construction, Grand Jete Studio of Dance, the Salisbury Youth Association Cheerleading squad, Mechanics Plus Towing and Transport, and the East Penn Emmaus Midget Football Association, groups that build floats and march in divisions rather than write sponsorship checks. The parade's presenting sponsor covers infrastructure costs, but the event itself is powered by the same volunteer committee structure that has run it since the American Legion first took charge in 1921.
Neither model is better than the other. They're just proof that the same two blocks of downtown Emmaus can support a chamber-driven daytime festival in September and a century-old volunteer parade in October without either one crowding out the other.
What This Adds Up To
Walk from the finish line of the 5K to the food truck court on Main Street and you've covered most of the distance either event requires. The Scarecrow Trail sends festival-goers into the same storefronts the parade passes an hour later. The tie-dye station that spilled into the Wells Fargo lot in September sits roughly where the parade's Xfinity Food Truck Court sets up in October. Triangle Park closes out one season and opens the next, and the borough never has to build anything new to make either event work.
If you've lived in Emmaus for a while, you already know both events exist. What's easy to miss is how tightly they're wound around the same handful of blocks, one paid for by local businesses hanging their names on a Saturday afternoon, the other kept alive by a food bank fundraiser and a parade committee that traces back more than a hundred years.
If you're new to town, or thinking about what a fall in Emmaus actually looks like day to day, Creighton Faust is happy to point you toward whichever end of Main Street you'll want to be standing on this October.
