photo by: Richard Gwin

Festivalgoers fill the streets of Baldwin City for the Maple Leaf Festival on Saturday, October 19, 2013. For more than 50 years, the festival has been held the third week in October.

The maple trees lining the brick streets of Baldwin City are beginning to display their fall splendor, just as a founder of the Maple Leaf Festival anticipated before the first festival 60 years ago.

Ivan Boyd, one of the Baker University professors who founded the festival as a way to show off the community and university, applied his knowledge as a biology professor to select the third weekend in October as the best time to schedule the event to take advantage of the beauty of the maple leaf display, said Donna Curran, Maple Leaf Festival booth committee chair.

The event the Baker professors founded six decades ago has grown into an annual festival that draws about 30,000 visitors to Baldwin City to shop at more than 400 food and crafts booths, Curran said.

The festival will start Friday, Oct. 19, but first-day activities will be limited to Toby’s Carnival from 6 to 10 p.m. in the 800 block of High Street. The real action starts at 9 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 20, with the opening of the food and crafts booths lining the streets downtown and along the west side of the Baker campus. Curran said the festival committee has filled the 361 booth spaces, and the Baldwin City Professional Business Women’s craft show in the 800 block of Chapel Street will have about 40 more. Booths will be open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. to the close of the festival at 5 p.m. Sunday.

The biggest crowds of the weekend will arrive for the about 90-minute parade, which starts at 11 a.m. Saturday. The theme this year is “Branch out with Maple Leaf,” and the parade grand marshal is Marvin Jardon, former Baldwin City postmaster and community volunteer, Curran said.

A short parade for children is scheduled for 10:45 a.m. Children wanting to participate should gather at 10:30 a.m. in front of the Baldwin City Library on the southeast corner of Seventh and High streets. Seventh Street immediately south of High Street will be reserved for children’s activities throughout the weekend, Curran said. A petting zoo, pony rides, face painting, a bouncy house and other activities will be available.

Downtown parking is limited during festival weekend, and visitors are encouraged to take advantage of park-and-ride lots on the Baldwin City school district’s west campus, 100 Bullpup Drive, and east campus, 415 Eisenhower St. The lots will be well marked from U.S. Highway 56 and County Road 1055.

Dogs are not allowed on festival streets, and those with dogs will be ticketed.