Thirty Years of Thursdays, Trail Ridge Road Update, and the Market Opens Today

The Estes Valley Farmers Market opened this morning.

The idea behind it is 5,000 years old and nearly got killed

 by a refrigerator.

The Mountain Thread | Estes Park Newsletter | June 4, 2026

BEFORE THE COFFEE GETS COLD

Moe stopped by Wednesday morning and asked where I was going so early on Thursday.

I told him the farmers market opens at 8 a.m. and the good vendors sell out.

He said he did not know Estes Park had a farmers market.

I told him it has been running every Thursday since 1996. Thirty years of Thursdays. He has driven past it approximately one hundred and fifty times.

He said he would go today.

I told him to bring cash.

The Estes Valley Farmers Market opened for the season this morning, June 4, 2026, at the Estes Park Visitor Center east lot on Big Thompson Avenue. It will be there every Thursday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. through mid-September. Rain or shine.

This seemed like a good week to talk about where this idea came from. Because it did not start in 1996. It did not start in Colorado. It did not start in America.

It started five thousand years ago and nearly got killed by a refrigerator.

SIT DOWN. THIS ONE'S GOOD.

How Old Is This Idea?

Before the grocery store. Before the supermarket chain. Before the refrigerated truck and the centralized distribution center and the produce aisle that looks the same in Denver as it does in Dallas.

Before all of that, there was a person with something to sell, another person who needed it, and a place they both agreed to show up.

The first recorded open-air markets trace back more than 5,000 years to ancient Egypt, where people gathered along the Nile to trade wheat, fruit, vegetables, and the basic goods of daily life. The Romans had them. Every city in the ancient world had some version of them. They were not a trend. They were not a lifestyle choice. They were how people ate.

When European settlers arrived in America they brought the concept with them. Governor John Winthrop established a formal market in Boston in 1634. Hartford got one in 1643. New York City by 1686. Philadelphia in 1693. By the time the country was a century old, most American cities of any size had a municipal market at their center. It was infrastructure. As essential as a road or a well.

George Washington sold produce from his farm at Mount Vernon at the Old Town Farmers Market in Alexandria, Virginia. The man who commanded the Continental Army and presided over the Constitutional Convention loaded up vegetables and sent them to market. That happened.

The Lancaster Central Market in Pennsylvania has been operating continuously since 1730. It started on a 120-square-foot plot of land, about the footprint of a small bedroom, conveyed from a private estate for public use. It is still running today, nearly three centuries of uninterrupted commerce, and it received its charter from King George II personally, back when Pennsylvania was still a British colony.

Think about that. The oldest farmers market in America was there before the country was.

What Nearly Killed It?

Then came refrigeration.

Then came the interstate highway. Then came the supermarket, which could carry a thousand products from a hundred different places and keep them cold and stack them in neat rows under fluorescent lights year round.

The farmers market, by comparison, was inconvenient. Seasonal. Weather-dependent. Limited in selection. You could not get strawberries in January at a farmers market in Colorado. You could not get bananas at any point, ever, from anyone selling things they grew near Estes Park.

By the 1950s and 1960s, farmers markets across the United States had largely withered. The USDA counted fewer than 2,000 operating markets in the entire country as late as 1993. The thing that had fed American cities for 350 years had nearly disappeared in a single generation.

It took a pile of produce on a government lawn to start bringing it back.

What Happened in California?

The Lancaster Central Market in Pennsylvania is the oldest continuously operated farmers market in the United States, confirmed by the USDA. It has been running since 1730. What royal figure gave the market its permanent charter, and what was the approximate size of the original market plot?

Spring is turning into summer in the Estes Park market right now, and that means the mountain real estate market is doing the same thing. Inventory moves fast in Colorado mountain towns once the summer season gets going. If you have been watching the Estes Park market or thinking about what owning something up here actually looks like, now is the time to start paying attention.

 

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RMNP UPDATE

Trail Ridge Road opened this week. Check nps.gov/romo or call 970-586-1222 for the most current status before you go. When it is open, timed entry permits are required between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. for general access and between 5 a.m. and 6 p.m. for the Bear Lake Road Corridor through June 30. A separate park entrance fee or pass is required in addition to any permit.

Forty percent of permits are released at 7 p.m. MDT the night before your desired entry date on Recreation.gov if you missed the earlier release window.

Old Fall River Road remains closed. It typically opens around the Fourth of July in a normal year. This year has not been normal. Check conditions before you plan around it.

Lower elevation trails are in good shape. Wildflowers on south-facing slopes below 9,500 feet are running strong from the staggered bloom that followed the May snowstorm. Early morning is still the best time on the lower trails. The afternoon thunderstorm pattern is established now. Start early, carry layers, be off exposed terrain by early afternoon.

DID YOU KNOW? 

The Lancaster Central Market in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, established in 1730, is recognized by the USDA Agricultural Research Service as the oldest continuously operated public farmers market in American history. It started on a 120-square-foot plot of land conveyed from a private estate and has been running for nearly 300 years without stopping. 

The Estes Valley Farmers Market has been running since approximately 1996, with Scofield Fruits noting that 2025 marked their 30th year as one of only two original vendors. Thirty years of Thursdays in the east lot of the Estes Park Visitor Center, rain or shine. U.S. National Park Service

The USDA counted fewer than 2,000 farmers markets operating in the entire United States as recently as 1993. Today there are more than 8,600. The entire revival happened in a single generation, driven by people who wanted to buy food from the person who grew it.

George Washington sold produce from his Mount Vernon farm at the Old Town Farmers Market in Alexandria, Virginia. The man who commanded the Continental Army, presided over the Constitutional Convention, and served two terms as president loaded up vegetables and sent them to market. He would have fit in fine on Big Thompson Avenue on a Thursday morning.

Buck's Joke Of The Day

George Washington sold vegetables at the farmers market.

King George II personally chartered one in Pennsylvania in 1742.

California farmers changed state regulations in 1977 by showing up in Sacramento with a truckload of produce.

The Estes Valley Farmers Market has been running every Thursday since 1996 and Moe Pass did not know it existed.

He drove past it approximately one hundred and fifty times.

(He is going today. He has been told to bring cash.)

Lancaster Central Market received its permanent charter from King George II, who designated Lancaster a market town in 1742, twelve years after the market's founding. The original market plot was approximately 120 square feet, about the size of a small bedroom. The market has been operating continuously since 1730 and is confirmed by the USDA as the oldest public farmers market in the United States.

UNTIL NEXT WEEK

Moe came by and said he had gone to the market.

I asked him which booth had the best tomatoes.

He said it was too early in the season for tomatoes and he had bought honey and a loaf of sourdough bread and some boozy nuts because the vendor made a convincing argument.

I told him that was the whole point.

He said he understood now why it had been running for thirty years.

That is the thing about a good idea. It does not need to be new to keep working. Someone in Egypt figured this out five thousand years ago. Someone in Pennsylvania has been proving it right since 1730. Someone in Estes Park has been showing up with a truck every Thursday morning since 1996.

The market will be there next week. Same hours. Same idea that has been working since before anyone alive can remember.

Stay smart, stay safe, and leave the market with something you did not plan to buy.

.

.- Buck Timber The Mountain Thread themountainthread.com/signup

This account draws from the USDA Agricultural Research Service, the National Farmers Market Coalition, the City of Boston historical records, the Lancaster Central Market archives, Estes Valley Voice and the documented history of the American farmers market movement. The peach story is told the way Buck heard it. The Lancaster market is still open. George Washington really did sell vegetables.   - Buck

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