De Witt County Illinois Clinton Apple and Pork Festival
Clinton’s late-September weekend is published almost everywhere as the Apple ‘n Pork Festival, a two-day museum fundraiser on the grounds of the C.H. Moore Homestead. The longer wording at the top of this page, with “and” spelled out, appears in print only as the page title of a 2025 local-news item whose body text uses the shorter name; no organiser layer prints it. One old community guide reverses the pairing as the Pork and Apple Festival, an outlier no organiser or news layer adopts. Clinton is the county seat of DeWitt County, spelled DeWitt in the published layers, and the festival’s home is the homestead museum on the town’s north side, where the museum association first staged it to pay for restoring and furnishing the C.H. Moore home.
About the Apple ‘n Pork Festival
The festival was established by the DeWitt County Museum Association as a fundraiser to restore and furnish the C.H. Moore home, according to a 2025 local-news layer carrying museum-supplied material; a mirror of the festival’s own social page credits the same body, and no separate festival committee name is published. The host body is printed in three unmerged forms: “C.H. Moore Homestead DeWitt County Museum” in a 2026 news layer and on the organiser’s site; “C.H. Moore Homestead & DeWitt County Museum” in listing and news layers across 2025 and 2026; and “C-H Moore Homestead” in a 2025 news layer. The museum-supplied material gives the money a purpose: proceeds fund routine museum maintenance and operation, educational programmes, activities and special events, and many local non-profit organisations benefit from food-booth sales on the grounds.
The grounds sit on East Woodlawn Street in Clinton. A 2026 news layer places the house on Clinton’s north side, while a 2025 layer calls it the north edge of town; both stand. One further footprint statement stands separately: a 2025 local-news item about the public library hosting vendors on its own property says the festival is spread out from the Square in Downtown Clinton to the DeWitt County Fairgrounds. That claim concerns the weekend’s reach; it does not displace the museum grounds named as the festival’s home.
Quick Facts
| Item | Detail |
| Published name | Apple ‘n Pork Festival |
| Organiser | DeWitt County Museum Association |
| Venue | C.H. Moore Homestead DeWitt County Museum grounds, Clinton |
| Host town | Clinton, county seat of DeWitt County |
| Published slot | Last full weekend of September |
| 2025 edition | Fifty-seventh annual billing, 27 and 28 September, nine to five |
| 2026 edition | Fifty-eighth annual billing, 26 and 27 September, nine to five |
| Admission | Free in 2026 for the grounds and the flea market |
| Founding claims | 1967 from the organiser, 1968 from a listing layer, 1969 from a social mirror, unreconciled |
| Original purpose | Fundraiser to restore and furnish the C.H. Moore home |
History
Every credible layer tells the same small beginning: a modest museum fundraiser built around a single kettle of soup and a stack of sandwiches served on the museum lawn, its money aimed at restoring the C.H. Moore home. Where the layers part company is the year.
The organiser’s own page is the fullest source. It says the first Apple ‘n Pork Festival took place in the fall of 1967, beginning as a small fundraiser with a single kettle of soup and a stack of sandwiches. Yet the same page states the museum was established in 1968, so the festival’s stated start predates it by a year. That tension sits inside one page, recorded exactly as printed.
For a useful comparison, see the DeKalb County Illinois Sandwich Fair Festival for another county festival.
A listing layer for the 2026 edition gives the first festival to 1968 instead, held on the museum grounds with the same kettle of soup and stack of sandwiches. A mirror of the festival’s social page offers a third year: established in 1969 by the museum association. An older travel layer frames the origin differently again, describing a fundraiser luncheon or social held by a preservation group in the fall of 1968 to begin restoration, a luncheon rather than a festival. A farm-bureau magazine layer, celebrating the festival’s fifty years in the fall of its own publication year, repeats the soup-and-sandwiches beginning and the restoration purpose but states no calendar year, so the fifty years is a billing only. A video layer stays vaguest of all: created in the late 1960s to preserve the homestead.
The annual billings march in step even though the founding claims do not: a 2025 local-news layer bills that edition the fifty-seventh annual, and 2026 news layers bill theirs the fifty-eighth annual. Within the 2025 layer, the Clinton police chief calls the event a well-oiled machine after fifty-seven years, a remark fenced to that layer that settles nothing about 1967, 1968 or 1969. The organiser’s history text lists the first festival’s elements as live music, arts and crafts exhibitions and historical reenactments.
What to Expect
The fullest single picture comes from the 2026 news layer: more than twenty-five booths of old-fashioned, harvest-time apple and pork foods, tours of the C.H. Moore home, identified there as the home of Abraham Lincoln’s law partner and personal friend, a juried fine art show and a huge flea market with more than three hundred booths. Demonstrating craftsmen sell their work beside an antique tractor show and farm equipment exhibits; the festival’s own Abraham Lincoln gives presentations; and demonstrations of meal grinding, rope making, chair caning and blacksmithing run alongside free live music.
The 2025 layer, carrying museum-supplied material, describes a closely matching weekend: artisans demonstrating old-fashioned crafts, free farm museum tours, blacksmithing and meal-grinding demonstrations, children’s activities, artists displaying their work, and a flea market of more than three hundred booths across the museum’s covered bridge, offering antiques, crafts and other merchandise. Its food count is over twenty-five booths of apple and pork foods, and its Lincoln presenter, per the museum director’s interview in the same layer, gives three presentations a day.
Two further programme lists belong to no single dated edition and stay fenced. The organiser’s current undated list adds pony rides, petting zoos, a Victorian-era magician, clog dancers, tomahawk throwing, free musical entertainment and a Pigs on Parade contest. An undated magazine listing adds a Civil War encampment, living-history interpreters, artisan demonstrations and events for children; the encampment is claimed there for no dated year. A bank community layer for 2019 lists over twenty-five food stands, nineteenth-century craft demonstrations, mansion tours, woodcarving, farm museum displays, pony rides and a large flea market with over two hundred fifty dealers, a figure belonging to 2019 and never blended with the three hundred booths of 2025 and 2026.
Planning Your Visit
For 2026, a news layer states the position plainly: no admission fee for the festival or the flea market grounds. A listing layer for the same year agrees, saying admission to the museum grounds and the flea market is free. Component statements from the museum-supplied 2025 material are fenced to that year, never read as a gate price: the farm equipment and railroad exhibit buildings are free, live music is free, and tram and bus transport to and from the grounds is readily available for a small fee whose amount that layer does not publish. Mansion tour pricing appears in no layer read, so no house-tour figure is quoted.
Both recent editions ran nine in the morning to five in the afternoon; the 2025 layer adds breakfast from seven at a few tents on the grounds. Where to picture the festival is a two-part answer, kept unmerged: organiser and news layers centre everything on the museum grounds, while the 2025 library item describes a footprint stretching from the downtown Square to the DeWitt County Fairgrounds. The grounds are the home; the wider statement describes the weekend’s spill.
A Sample Festival Day
A day shaped on the September 2026 edition could run as follows. Start at the nine in the morning opening with the food rows, choosing among the more than twenty-five booths of harvest-time apple and pork foods listed that year. Spend mid-morning with the demonstrating craftsmen, watching meal grinding, rope making, chair caning and blacksmithing, then tour the C.H. Moore home. Fit in a presentation by the festival’s own Abraham Lincoln, the juried fine art show and the antique tractor show, then give the flea market’s three hundred booths a long afternoon stretch. Free live music runs through the day, and the grounds close at five, the published closing for both 2025 and 2026.
How It Compares
Clinton’s festival is a museum fundraiser on a homestead’s grounds; its closest namesake in the county is a different creature. The DeWitt County Fair, also styled the Farmer City–DeWitt County Fair, takes place in Farmer City in July, another town and another season, a county fair rather than a benefit for one historic house. The 2025 footprint statement mentioning the DeWitt County Fairgrounds might suggest the two merge, but it describes the weekend’s reach, not a shared identity, and no layer makes the fair part of the festival. Its proceeds give it a narrower footing than a county fair.
Checklist
- Confirm the year’s dates against the last full weekend of September
- Note the published hours, nine in the morning to five in the afternoon
- Allow the flea market serious time, since layers count more than three hundred booths
- Build the morning around the craft demonstrations and a tour of the C.H. Moore home
- Note that tram and bus rides carry a small fee whose amount is unpublished
- Treat mansion tour pricing as unpublished; no layer states a figure
- Leave the DeWitt County Fair in Farmer City for July, a separate trip
Beyond the Festival Weekend
The homestead has a life outside its biggest weekend. The published purpose for the proceeds, routine maintenance, operation, educational programmes, activities and special events, ties the two festival days to the museum’s whole year. Other homestead programming, such as Halloween at the Homestead, is museum programming, not a festival element. The same separation holds for the hospital’s Swifty Swine run at Weldon Springs State Park on the festival Saturday, reported alongside the coverage but published by no layer as part of the programme.
Why the Festival Matters
The scale claims are large, conflicting and of different kinds, never blended into one figure. The organiser’s page claims, without a year, that at its peak the festival attracted upwards of one hundred thousand visitors over a single two-day celebration, a peak claim rather than an edition count. Museum-supplied material in the 2025 layer gives an average of eighty thousand attending, and adds that approximately one thousand people tour the landmark mansion during the festival, a component figure rather than a festival count. For 2026, a radio layer reports officials saying the festival can bring as many as eighty thousand people to Clinton, an expectation voiced beforehand, not a count made afterwards.
A mirror of the festival’s thank-you post reports the police chief estimating around eighty-seven thousand eight hundred visitors to the community for the fifty-eighth annual festival in 2026, an estimate of visitors to the community rather than a turnstile count. A bank community layer in 2019 reported that over one hundred six thousand five hundred attended the previous year’s festival, a reported figure for the 2018 edition that no organiser count confirms. For the first day of 2025, a thin, truncated, second-hand social mirror has the chief indicating over fifty-five thousand came, a fragment carried only with those weaknesses attached. Together, despite their disagreements, the figures show a small museum fundraiser its town now measures in tens of thousands of visitors. Not one of them comes from a turnstile count published by the organiser: the layers offer a peak claim, an average, an expectation, a police estimate and two reported figures, and each keeps the label its own layer gave it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do the sources give different starting years for this festival?
Because the layers genuinely disagree. The organiser’s page puts the first festival in the fall of 1967 while dating the museum’s establishment to 1968; a 2026 listing layer gives 1968, a social-page mirror says 1969, and an older travel layer describes a fall 1968 fundraiser luncheon as the origin. All four stand; none is settled.
Is the Apple ‘n Pork Festival the same event as the DeWitt County Fair?
No. The DeWitt County Fair, also styled the Farmer City–DeWitt County Fair, is held in Farmer City in July, a different event in a different town. A 2025 news item mentioning the DeWitt County Fairgrounds described the Clinton festival weekend’s footprint; no layer makes the fair part of the homestead festival.
What is known about the tram and bus rides to the grounds?
Museum-supplied material in the 2025 layer says tram and bus transport to and from the grounds is readily available for a small fee whose amount it never publishes. The statement belongs to 2025, fenced apart from the free admission confirmed for 2026.
What does the museum do with the takings from its homestead fundraiser?
The museum-supplied answer from 2025: proceeds fund routine maintenance and operation of the museum, plus its educational programmes, activities and special events. The same material notes that many local non-profit organisations benefit from food-booth sales on the grounds, so the takings spread beyond the homestead.
What to Expect From the Next De Witt County Illinois Clinton Apple and Pork Festival
How often is De Witt County Illinois Clinton Apple and Pork Festival held?
Its published rhythm is a single weekend placed on the last full weekend of September. A social-mirror layer and a museum-directory layer print that slot; a bank community layer said the same in 2019. The two most recent editions fit it, falling on 27 and 28 September 2025 and 26 and 27 September 2026.
When is the next De Witt County Illinois Clinton Apple and Pork Festival?
The trail of published dates ends with the fifty-eighth annual weekend of 26 and 27 September 2026. On the printed slot alone, the next running would fall on the last full weekend of September 2027, but no organiser announcement or confirmed dates for that year are quoted here.
Will the dates change?
The slot is defined by position within the month rather than fixed dates, so the numbered days already move: 27 and 28 September in 2025 became 26 and 27 September in 2026. Whether a future year might depart from that pattern is something the published layers leave unaddressed.
In Closing
A kettle of soup and a stack of sandwiches on a museum lawn became Clinton’s largest weekend, and the record is honest about its untidiness: three founding years, shifting name forms, footprint statements reaching beyond the grounds, crowd figures that refuse to agree. What holds steady is the purpose the association started with, a fundraiser for the C.H. Moore home that still pays for the museum’s year, served up each last full weekend of September.
