Caledonia, Missouri — Washington County
On the second Saturday of every October, Caledonia throws a party far bigger than the town. This year’s, on October 10, was the 25th Caledonia Pumpkin Festival, and the village made it a patriotic one for the country’s 250th birthday, opening with a 10 a.m. parade of waving American flags.
Caledonia had 131 residents at the last census. That is a small crew to put on a festival, and the crowds are not small. In 2015 the Daily Journal put that year’s turnout at an estimated 10,000 people, about 75 visitors for every person who lives there.
What 25 Years Looks Like
This year’s festival ran from 10 to 4, and getting in was free. The village lined up more than 100 handcrafted vendors, food, live music and wine tasting. There were pony rides, a petting zoo, a game area and gellyball, and a History Tent for anyone who wanted to hear how the town began. Free shuttles brought visitors in from parking on Highway 32, and ran from Village Park out to the corn maze and pumpkin patch at Rowe Crop Farm.
Nina Gilliam, who owns the Old Village Mercantile on Main Street, started the festival as a day of mostly free fun for families. The way she put it in St. Louis Magazine last year still fits: “a true country festival, wonderful for the entire family.”
Each year gets a theme. In 2021 it was the Missouri Bicentennial Pumpkin Fest, with a Friday-night street party and a pumpkin recipe contest. Last year’s parade was cowboy themed. The parade itself is the kind small towns do best. In 2021 the sheriff and members of the VFW and its auxiliary led it down Main Street, followed by floats, walkers, bikes, ATVs and horses, and the rules said candy had to be handed out, not thrown. Visitors parked north of town and rode in on wagons pulled by tractors.
A Village Older Than Missouri
Caledonia was a town before Missouri was a state. The Bellevue Valley around it was first settled in 1798, mostly by Scots-Irish families from Tennessee and North Carolina. In 1819, two years before statehood, Alexander Craighead began selling lots in a new town he named Caledonia, the old Latin name for Scotland.
A good share of the village is still standing from those years and the century after. Twenty-six acres of it are on the National Register of Historic Places as the Caledonia Historic District, with buildings from about 1818 to 1936: Greek Revival houses, old Methodist and Presbyterian churches and even a 1930 Conoco station. When a fire in 1909 burned the east side of Main Street, merchants rebuilt in concrete block. One of those buildings, Stewart McSpaden’s Golden Rule Store, is where the Old Village Mercantile sells candy, fudge, ice cream and antiques today.
For about three decades the village even had a college. The Bellevue Collegiate Institute, backed by the Methodist Church, taught boys and girls from grammar school through a bachelor’s degree. It never had 100 students at one time, and many of them boarded with families in town. The school closed in 1902, and the building later served as Caledonia’s high school before it was torn down in the 1950s. Its bell now sits on top of a historical marker at the site.
Something on the Calendar Nearly Every Month
The pumpkin festival is the biggest day of Caledonia’s year, but hardly the only one. This year’s village calendar also had a Strawberry and BBQ Festival in May with u-pick strawberries at Rowe Crop Farm, a vintage and antique crawl in June, a Blessing of the Jeeps in August and an Apple and Bluegrass Festival in September.
Still ahead this year: the Chocolate Walk and Christmas Open House, November 20–21; Santa at the candy store for Small Business Saturday, November 28, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.; the Christmas Market and Cookie Walk on Main, December 5; Caledonia Grinchmas, December 12; and the Christmas Stroll and Sidewalk Glow, December 19. Caledonia is on Highway 21 in the Bellevue Valley, about seven miles north of Elephant Rocks State Park. For hours and details, the village says to call 573-779-3907.
Why It Works
A festival this size does not happen by accident in a town of 131. Somebody lines up the floats, books the pony rides, signs up the vendors and drives the shuttle, and then does it all again the next year. It takes a few people deciding every fall that the tradition is worth the trouble, and a whole region that keeps showing up for it.
We see the same thing in the parishes, schools and posts that raise money on Go Raise Dough. The money matters, but so does the reason to get together. Traditions like the ones in Caledonia are a big part of how small communities stay communities.
Does your town have a festival that has outlasted everyone’s expectations? Who started it, what the theme was the year you remember best, who always wins the pie-eating contest. We would like to hear about it.
Top photo: A wagonload of pumpkins, with more stacked into pyramids behind it. Photo: Lesly B. Juarez, via Unsplash and Wikimedia Commons (CC0). It was not taken in Caledonia.