Sixty Years of Marching Bands, Mountain Ash, and One Very Well-Kept Secret: Inside the Autumn Leaf Festival.

The parade is the part everybody remembers. For host Ann Peavey it was hiding behind her dad’s pant leg on Front Street while a Seafair Pirate dragged his sword down the pavement — and then, a few years later, marching past that same spot with the Leavenworth Middle School Spartan band, glockenspiel in hand. On this episode of Talkin’ Schnitzel, Ann welcomed her first-ever guest who isn’t Troy Campbell: Jessie Swider, president of the Autumn Leaf Festival Association, who worked her way up from parade walker to the top job and knows where all the town’s best-kept secrets are buried.

Older Than the Bavarian Facades

The Autumn Leaf Festival has been happening since 1964, which makes it the longest-running festival in town — it celebrated its 60th in 2023. It also predates the Bavarian theme that Leavenworth is known for today. The founders weren’t marketing a village; they were marking a season they already loved.

Sixty years means things come and go. Jessie doesn’t remember the Seafair Pirates from her own childhood, but she remembers the Spaghetti Band — a group of adults in wigs and costumes who played the parade every year and then wandered down to one of the sausage gardens afterward to keep going. There was also a stretch, before either of their school years, when every high school grade level built its own float.

What the Parade Actually Looks Like

Leavenworth belongs to a regional parade circuit where member towns agree to travel to each other’s events, so the lineup pulls floats and royalty from Seattle, Spokane, Portland, British Columbia, and closer neighbors like Wenatchee. Add equestrian groups, drill teams, and community entries, and the goal — as Jessie puts it — is simply for the whole thing to be entertaining.

Then there’s the Leavenworth advantage: the festival lands after school starts, which makes it a genuine draw for marching bands. Summer parades can’t say that. If you’ve ever wondered why the brass sounds so much bigger here, that’s why.

Insider tip: The main parade steps off at noon, but get there earlier for the kids parade. Kids gather at the Fest Hall and take a shorter route down Front Street — decorated bikes, costumes, Bavarian clothing, and one memorable year, a kid in a full dog suit who stole the entire show. There’s no sign-up and no local-kid requirement. Show up and jump in. They launch just after the main parade so the big entries catch up behind them, which puts the kids right out front.

The Rest of the Weekend

The parade is an hour and a half. The festival is two days.

Live music runs throughout the day down at the gazebo, with crafts, games, activities, and food vendors filling the park. A few Leavenworth regulars keep going with extra festival energy: art in the park is still up, and the farmers market runs Saturday as usual. The Friends of the Library book sale starts with Autumn Leaf weekend and carries through Oktoberfest, down on Commercial Street by the little plaza with the restrooms. The Lions Club puts on one of its all-you-can-eat pancake breakfasts in the park that morning. And new this year, there’s a craft fair at the Grange Hall.

The Royal Lady of the Autumn Leaves

Walk up the staircase at Leavenworth City Hall and you’ll pass a wall of portraits — women in fine dresses and dirndls, going back decades. That’s every Royal Lady of the Autumn Leaves, a tradition dating to the festival’s first year, and one of the more charming things this town does.

The Royal Lady is described as a mature woman — the minimum age is 50 — and she’s chosen for her cumulative service to Leavenworth, whether through the business community, volunteering, or simply years of making the place better. She rides the float, travels the circuit from Apple Blossom through Seafair and on to Portland, Olympia, Marysville, Spokane, and British Columbia, and represents the town everywhere she goes.

Insider tip: The selection process is the best part. A secret committee of three chooses her. Nobody knows who all three are, including the members themselves — one rotates off each year and the remaining two nominate a replacement. The chosen Royal Lady tells no one, working through a past Royal Lady who acts as her “companion” and calls the president to confirm a selection has been made without saying who. That secret holds from roughly October until the first Tuesday in March, when it’s revealed Oscars-style at the Royal Lady banquet, envelope and all, as she walks in from the back of the room. At the banquet, everyone plays the same game: who isn’t here tonight?

About Those Leaves

Nobody can promise peak color on a specific weekend, and Jessie won’t pretend otherwise. Some years the leaves have barely turned — in which case, as she says, the festival is simply marking the start of fall and welcoming the leaves when they arrive. Other years they’re already spectacular.

The trees along the highway that everyone asks about, the ones going red first? Mountain ash. It’s reportedly the number one question the festival crew fields.

Getting In, Getting Out, and Where to Park

Entries stage up near the old Osborn school district office on Evans Street, north of the highway, so the surrounding residential side streets fill with bands and floats — skip that area if you’re just passing through. The route runs the length of Highway 2, down past Dan’s Food Market and Gustav’s, then turns up Ski Hill Drive to disperse.

Highway 2 closes in both directions around 11:50 and reopens the moment the last entry clears — about an hour and a half. Coming from Wenatchee and heading west, flaggers will route you through the north side of residential town along Pine Street. Coming down Tumwater Canyon and heading east, the detour runs Icicle Road and East Leavenworth Road.

Insider tip: Wherever you park, you’re parked for the duration. Once the parade starts, you can’t pull out onto the route — and that includes hotel lots that open onto the highway. If you need to be somewhere around noon, move the car early. Otherwise, arrive early and head straight for the paid lots rather than circling for metered spots; some Front Street metered parking is pulled for the route anyway and reopens once the parade ends.

Your Autumn Leaf Cheat Sheet

• When: The last full weekend of September — specifically, the last weekend whose Sunday still falls in September. In 2026, that’s September 26–27.

• Parade: Noon on Saturday, with the kids parade immediately ahead of it from the Fest Hall.

• Also happening: Gazebo music, crafts and games in the park, food vendors, art in the park, the Saturday farmers market, the Friends of the Library book sale, the Lions Club pancake breakfast, and this year’s new Grange Hall craft fair.

• Traffic: Highway 2 closed both directions roughly 11:50 to 1:30. Detours via Pine Street westbound, Icicle Road and East Leavenworth Road eastbound.

• Parking: Early, and in the paid lots.

Ask Jessie what she looks forward to most and the answer isn’t the parade — it’s the hour after it. Organizing a parade means standing at the start or the finish and rarely seeing the middle, so the live music afterward is when she finally gets to take it in. This year that includes Musikkapelle Leavenworth, bringing a quartet with big orchestral arrangements of the polkas and waltzes everyone knows. As she puts it, that’s what fall sounds like.

It’s worth saying that a festival this size runs on a remarkably small crew: a dedicated board including Scott and Linda Bradshaw, parade chair Charlotte Lay, and Janet Johnson keeping everyone organized — plus the volunteers who show up in spring just to decorate the float, and the ones who only travel to Seafair. Everyone finds their own way in.

Talkin’ Schnitzel is Visit Leavenworth’s podcast, hosted by Ann Peavey. More Autumn Leaf Festival information is at leavenworthautumnleaffestival.org. Next episode: Ernest Palmer of the Chamber of Commerce on all things Oktoberfest. Catch up on past episodes on the Leavenworth blog.