Sullivan County Pennsylvania Eagles Mere Arts & Crafts Festival
The county name built into this title can mislead, so the determination belongs at the front: the Eagles Mere Arts & Crafts Festival is not a county fair in any sense. It is a juried fine-arts and crafts gathering occupying the Village Green in Eagles Mere borough, Sullivan County, Pennsylvania, for one August weekend each documented year. No livestock judging, midway, grandstand show or premium exhibition appears anywhere in the record its organiser publishes. Sullivan County does possess a genuine agricultural fair, staged at Forksville in a different borough and a different month. What follows treats the Eagles Mere festival strictly on its own evidence, with prices, hours and programme details pinned throughout to the edition that published them.
A Juried Weekend Run by a Preservation Nonprofit
The host named across the organiser’s own pages is Eagles Mere Historic Village, rendered in its legal form as The Eagles Mere Historic Village, Inc. A 2024 organiser-side item describes that corporation as a nonprofit founded in 2003 to purchase, restore and preserve the historic commercial buildings in the town centre of Eagles Mere. The festival travels under several published name forms best kept apart: the organiser’s 2025 news item calls it the Annual Arts and Crafts Festival, the 2018 and 2026 layers use Arts & Crafts Festival, and the 2023 and 2024 material styles it the Annual Juried Arts & Crafts Festival. An Eagles Mere Association calendar shortens the name to EMHVI Arts & Crafts Fair, although the organiser itself never bills the event as a fair. Kristin Montgomery appears as the festival contact in the 2023 and 2025 layers only. Several neighbouring bodies must not be merged into the host: the Eagles Mere Foundation is a grantmaking community foundation established in August 1986 that funds village projects without organising this festival; Eagles Mere Friends of the Arts presents its own concerts and classes, surfacing in the 2024 layer only among the nonprofits benefiting from festival proceeds; the Eagles Mere Association and the Eagles Mere Athletic Association merely list or advertise the weekend; and a Merchants Association form on some calendar listings is a listing name, nothing more.
Quick Facts
| Item | Documented detail |
| Event | Eagles Mere Arts & Crafts Festival |
| Festival type | Juried fine-arts and crafts festival, not a county fair |
| Host community | Eagles Mere borough, Sullivan County, Pennsylvania |
| County seat | Laporte borough, spelled LaPorte in the State Archives table |
| Venue | The Village Green, Eagles Mere |
| Organiser | Eagles Mere Historic Village (The Eagles Mere Historic Village, Inc.) |
| Documented 2026 dates | Saturday, August 8 and Sunday, August 9, 2026 |
| Documented 2025 dates | Saturday, August 9 and Sunday, August 10, 2025 |
| Admission | Set per edition; eight dollars Saturday and five dollars Sunday in the 2026 layer |
| Parking and camping | No parking term published; no camping provision exists in the record |
Billings, a Lost Year and an Honest Blank Where a Founding Belongs
The festival’s age can only be described through its own edition billings, each tied to its year: a 48th Annual billing in 2018, then the 52nd in 2023, the 53rd in 2024, the 54th in 2025 and the 55th in 2026. Those numbers are billing and nothing else; no organiser layer states a founding year, a first edition or a founder, and subtracting an edition number from a calendar year would manufacture a beginning the evidence does not contain, particularly since the run is not unbroken. A Historic Village layer records that the Arts and Crafts Festival and the borough’s Antiques Market were both cancelled for 2020, a single lost year that reads as an interruption rather than an ending, because documented editions continue from 2023 through 2026. The host corporation’s 2003 founding dates the preservation nonprofit, not the festival, whose billings reach back well before 2003. Eagles Mere’s own past belongs to a different ledger: secondary layers date the borough’s laying out to 1877 and its incorporation to 1899, followed by a resort era around its mountain lake, and no town date supplies a festival fact.
What to Expect
Juried Booths Across the Green
The core picture is consistent across recent organiser layers: juried exhibitors selling handmade work from booths on the Green. The categories named for the 54th edition in 2025 were handcrafted jewelry, woodwork, felt, fiber, leather, glass pieces, photography and pottery. A year earlier, the 2024 release listed jewelry, traditional artwork including wood-turned products, fiber, leather, glass, photography and pottery. The 2023 edition spread wider still: a calendar layer counted over ninety booths, and the organiser’s page described personalised crafts, food items, jewelry, artwork and furniture alongside painting, photography, wood crafts, glass and pottery. In 2018 the exhibitor field was already regional, drawing makers from Pennsylvania and six other states with jewelry, pottery, fiber, leather and metal work among their goods. The 2026 advertisement promises juried fine arts without publishing categories or counts, so the newest edition’s mix remains undescribed in its own layer.
Food and Music, Never With Named Acts
Eating and listening are documented companions to the browsing in every recent edition. The 2024 release named its food plainly: fresh-cut fries, gyros, crab cakes, pulled pork, hot dogs, burgers and sausage. The 2025 news item promised good food and live music running throughout the weekend. For 2026 the advertisement bills only three elements, juried fine arts, great food and live entertainment, and stops there. That restraint matters, because no organiser layer for any edition names a musical act; performers belong to the separate concert programme of Eagles Mere Friends of the Arts, and importing those names would invent a lineup this festival never published.
For a useful comparison, see the Somerset County Pennsylvania Fair Festival for another county festival.
The Village Trading Alongside
A festival day here extends past the booth rows, because the Village Shops stand open beside the Green while the festival runs, and the 2025 layer widened that picture to the borough’s restaurants serving breakfast, lunch and dinner, with farm-fresh produce, baked goods, specialty coffees and frozen treats on sale.
Planning Your Visit
Dates, Hours and Admission Belong to Each Edition
The pattern reaches back to the 48th edition, on Saturday, August 11 and Sunday, August 12, 2018, with the same hours. The 52nd edition ran Saturday, August 12 and Sunday, August 13, 2023, from ten in the morning to five on Saturday and ten to four on Sunday, hours repeated by the 53rd edition on Saturday, August 10 and Sunday, August 11, 2024 and by the 54th on Saturday, August 9 and Sunday, August 10, 2025, billed in its news item as rain or shine. The 55th edition, on Saturday, August 8 and Sunday, August 9, 2026, shortened both days in its advertisement layer, closing at four on Saturday and at three on Sunday. Entry cost five dollars for teenagers and adults in 2023, with children twelve and under free. Both 2024 and 2025 charged seven dollars, offered a two-day admission at ten dollars and admitted children twelve and under free. The 2026 advertisement instead split the days, eight dollars on Saturday and five dollars on Sunday, publishing no child term and no two-day pass, so neither can be assumed for that edition.
Finding the Green
The venue description repeated by the 2023 and 2024 layers places the Village Green on the corner of Route 42 and Pennsylvania Avenue, across the street from the Sweet Shop, while the 2026 advertisement describes the same ground as the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Eagles Mere Avenue in Eagles Mere. A 2018 organiser layer gives 288 Eagles Mere Avenue as the Village Shops address, and calendar layers repeat it for the Green; it is a shops address layer, not a fairgrounds address, and the Green carries no other street address in any layer. An organiser route note from 2023 puts Eagles Mere along Route 42, six miles from the highway junction at Muncy Valley or from Laporte. The 2026 advertisement additionally warned that year’s travellers of a Route 42 detour routing traffic through Laporte, a direction belonging to 2026 only. One more location belongs to a single year: in 2023 part of the festival also occupied Merritt Field Airport, about two and a half miles east of town, where museum admission was stated to vary; no later layer repeats that arrangement.
Parking and Camping: Two Silences in the Record
No organiser layer for the 2018, 2023, 2024, 2025 or 2026 editions publishes a parking price, a parking pass or any festival parking arrangement, so nothing can responsibly be said about what parking costs or how it is organised. A free-parking line in older travel material belongs to a 1996 guide entry for the borough’s Fall Antique Market, a different event, and cannot be borrowed for this festival. Camping is plainer still: no campsite, hookup or overnight provision appears anywhere in the record, because this is a two-day daytime event in the middle of a borough, and camping grounds elsewhere in the county, including state park and state forest sites, are separate places forming no part of its offer.
A Sample Day on the Green
Arrive for the ten o’clock opening, the start time shared by every documented recent edition, and walk the full circuit of booths once before buying, noting which makers deserve a second visit. Take lunch from the food stalls on the Green, then give the early afternoon to the Village Shops and the Sweet Shop across the street before returning to the booths for the purchases held back from the morning pass. Check closing time against the edition in hand, since the 2026 advertisement shortened both days.
Not the County Fair, and Not the Antiques Market
Two confusions follow this festival, and both collapse on inspection. The Sullivan County Fair is an agricultural event held at Forksville in September, listed in the state fair guide as the county’s fair entry, while this Eagles Mere weekend appears in no fair guide or fair association list; the comparison sets a livestock show and midway against juried booths on a borough green. The nearer trap sits on the same ground: the host also stages Antiques Markets on the Green in other months, with their own billings, the 50th falling in 2025, the very year this festival counted its 54th. Dates, prices and edition numbers from either neighbour say nothing about this festival.
Visitor Checklist
- Check the organiser’s own announcement for the coming edition’s exact weekend and hours before setting out, since the 2026 layer changed the closing times
- Budget the gate money by edition: eight dollars Saturday and five dollars Sunday in 2026, seven dollars with a ten-dollar two-day pass in 2024 and 2025
- Bring a sturdy bag for carrying handmade purchases between booths
- Allow time for the Village Shops and the Sweet Shop alongside the booth rows
- Do not count on any published parking arrangement, because the organiser’s record publishes none
- Do not plan to camp at the festival, as no camping provision exists in its record
- Keep the borough’s Antiques Market dates separate when planning, as those events share the Green but not this festival’s record
Beyond the Village Green
The Green sits inside the small preserved commercial centre the host nonprofit exists to protect, so a festival trip widens naturally into the village itself: historic shop buildings, the Sweet Shop facing the booths, and quiet resort-era streets. Laporte borough, the county seat, spelled LaPorte in the State Archives courthouse table, which dates Sullivan County’s creation from Lycoming County to March 15, 1847, holds the courthouse that a national register nomination layer calls the smallest county seat in Pennsylvania. Laporte hosts nothing connected with this festival.
Why a Juried Weekend on a Green Matters
For a mountain borough of modest size, one August weekend concentrates an unusual amount of documented value. The gate money is not a commercial promoter’s takings: the 2025 item says proceeds benefit nonprofit organisations in Eagles Mere, the 2024 wording directs ticket proceeds toward upkeep of the village buildings and funds neighbours including the Eagles Mere Conservancy, the Friends of the Arts and the Eagles Mere Museum, and the 2023 layer ties proceeds to nonprofits assisting with the events and to upkeep of the village green. The juried format guarantees the handmade goods on the tables have passed a selection, keeping the festival’s character distinct from an open craft market.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this festival the same event as the Sullivan County Fair?
No, and the distinction is the single most useful fact about it. The county fair is an agricultural event at Forksville in September, the entry the state fair guide records for Sullivan County, while the Eagles Mere weekend is a juried arts festival on a village green in August appearing in no fair listing.
Where exactly is the festival held within Eagles Mere?
On the Village Green, described in the 2023 and 2024 layers as the corner of Route 42 and Pennsylvania Avenue across from the Sweet Shop, and in the 2026 advertisement as the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Eagles Mere Avenue. The locating layers centre on 288 Eagles Mere Avenue, the Village Shops address, and part of the 2023 edition also used Merritt Field Airport east of town, unrepeated since.
What has admission cost at the documented editions?
Only edition by edition: five dollars in 2018 and again in 2023 for teenagers and adults, seven dollars in 2024 and 2025 with a ten-dollar two-day pass, and a split of eight dollars Saturday and five dollars Sunday in 2026. Child terms were published for 2023 through 2025, freeing children twelve and under, but the 2026 layer printed none, so no edition’s price should be read onto another year.
Can visitors camp at the festival or count on free parking?
Neither arrangement exists in the organiser’s record. No camping term of any kind is published for any year, and no parking price or provision is published either.
What to Expect From the Next Sullivan County Pennsylvania Eagles Mere Arts & Crafts Festival
How often is Sullivan County Pennsylvania Eagles Mere Arts & Crafts Festival held?
The documented rhythm is annual, with editions billed for 2018 and then consecutively from 2023 through 2026, each falling on an August weekend. The one known break is the single-year cancellation of 2020.
When is the next Sullivan County Pennsylvania Eagles Mere Arts & Crafts Festival?
No organiser-side announcement for a 2027 edition was found in the record, so the honest answer rests on pattern alone: recent editions have occupied a Saturday and Sunday in mid-August, and a future weekend is best anticipated in that window, confirmed only when Eagles Mere Historic Village publishes it.
Will the dates change?
They have moved before, sliding within mid-August across the documented editions, and the 2026 advertisement even shortened the daily hours, so a coming edition’s exact weekend and times should be taken from its own announcement rather than assumed from any earlier year.
The Eagles Mere Arts & Crafts Festival rewards being taken for exactly what its record shows: a juried summer weekend of handmade work, food and music on a preserved village green, priced and timed afresh by its organiser each year. Visitors who arrive with the right edition’s details in hand will find the Green much as its hosts describe it.
