Thursday at the Farmers Market

Thursday is market day in Estes Park. On Thursday mornings from June through September, white tents go up in the Estes Park Visitor Center parking lot, and the lot fills with the smell of fresh peaches, cut flowers, and baked bread. The market runs from 8 in the morning until 1 in the afternoon, and it is the most reliable weekly appointment in town. The 2026 season ran June 4 through September 24, and the market returns each June.

Everything sold at the market is grown or made in Colorado. That is the rule, and it is what makes the market different from a grocery store. The produce comes from Colorado farms, the flowers from Colorado growers, the bread and jam and crafts from Colorado hands. In July the peaches arrive, and the line for them is the longest in the market. In August the vegetables are at their best. By September the air has a bite to it and the market feels like it is counting down its last weeks, and people buy a little extra because they know it will be months before the tents go up again.

The market is older than it looks. The first one was held on July 11, 1996, at the Estes Park Baptist Church, with 18 vendors. It was called the Estes/Big Thompson Valley Farmers Market then. Over the years it moved around town: to the Estes Park Brewery parking lot in 2000, when Mall Road was under construction, then to the fairgrounds, then to Bond Park, and finally to its current home at the Visitor Center. Each move was a small disruption and the market survived all of them, which is part of why people here are attached to it. It has been going for three decades.

The market's toughest year was 2013. When the September flood cut off the roads into town, the vendors could not reach Estes Park at all. On the morning of September 12, the call was made to cancel. But the vendors came back. On September 26, with permission to enter the community during the disaster, they held a market, and they followed it with a special October market on October 3, the first one ever held that late in the year. The market kept going through the hardest month the town has had in a generation, and people here still talk about it.

That is what the market really is: not just a place to buy vegetables, but a place where the town meets itself. Neighbors run into each other between the tents. Visitors discover that the town has a weekly rhythm beyond the shops on Elkhorn. Kids learn where food comes from by watching someone sell the carrots they pulled that morning. The vendors know their regulars by name, and the regulars know which tent to go to first.

The market is changing again. Beginning in 2027, it will officially become the Estes Park Farmers Market, with Michael and LeighAnn Scofield of Scofield Fruits taking on management. The name is shorter and the leadership is new, but the idea is the same one it has been since 1996: a Thursday morning, a parking lot full of tents, and a town showing up for the people who grow and make its food.

The market runs on volunteers as much as on vendors. The local Rotary club has staffed a booth at the market on Thursday mornings for years, and the market has always depended on that kind of steady help: people who show up, set up tents, answer questions, and keep the morning running. It is the same pattern as the rest of the market. Nobody gets rich off a Thursday morning in a parking lot. The market works because the people who run it and the people who shop at it both decided, a long time ago, that it was worth keeping.

If you live in Estes Park, the market is part of your week. You go for the peaches and stay for the conversations. You run into someone you have been meaning to call. You find out what is happening in town by listening to the people in line. The market is a farmers market, and it is also the town square, the notice board, and the reunion, all under white tents on a Thursday morning.

Go early. The good peaches do not wait, and neither does the best parking. Bring a bag, bring cash or a card, and bring a little time. The market rewards the people who linger.

Go with a guide

If you would rather go with someone who knows the trails, the sky, and the seasons, our guides lead trips in Rocky Mountain National Park and around Estes Park every day. See the guided tours and pick the one that fits your trip.