Zelienople hosts 41st annual Fall Festival
ZELIENOPLE — The 41st annual Zelienople Fall Festival took over Main Street between Friday, Oct. 9, and Sunday, Oct. 11. Festival organizer Kadin Riddle estimated that thousands packed the borough over the course of the event.
“The first two days were wonderful,” Riddle said. “We saw, I would have to say thousands of people go through Zelienople. The streets were packed. The chili cook-off was amazing.”
Most important, according to Riddle, were the benefits to Main Street businesses.
“That’s the whole point of the festival. We’re trying to bring people to town,” Riddle said. “We had a window decorating contest. We had various businesses on Main Street participate in that, so the goal is to bring people to town, and hopefully get some people into some of the businesses as well.”
There were some brand-new attractions for this year’s Fall Festival, including the “Boots on Main” line dancing event Saturday night.
“We tried out line dancing, which was very successful,” Riddle said. “We had a much bigger turnout than we were expecting, which was wonderful. We had the parking lot almost completely full of line dancers.”
Another new attraction for 2026 is the “Zelie's Sweetest Baking Competition,” which attracted 12 contestants in three categories — best cookie, best bread and best pie.
One of the entrants in the “cookie” category was Alyssa Smith, an employee at the Zelienople Area Public Library and an event coordinator for Fall Fest.
“My title is vendor coordinator, which I’ve done for most of the weekend,” Smith said. “But today I paid my entry fee and joined the contest.”
According to Riddle, the setup for the baking competition is nearly identical to that of the annual chili cook-off, with both a public voting component and professional judging.
“With the people's choice awards, you get tickets and you can vote for your favorite cookie and your favorite bread,” Riddle said. “We're gonna have judges from Papa Joe's, who also judged the chili cook-off, to judge the baking competition entries as well.”
“When visitors buy their taster tickets, they get tickets to drop into the bucket next to their favorite samples that they tried,” Smith said. “Then our judges will professionally decide the winner, and a people's choice winner will be chosen as well.”
