Downtown Baldwin City streets fill soon after the end or the parade during a recent Maple Leaf Festival. The event annually attracts an estimated 30,000 visitors to the southern Douglas County town.

The Maple Leaf Festival will return Oct. 20, 21 and 22 to Baldwin City for the 60th time, and the event’s organizing committee is going to celebrate the occasion with those who attend.

“We’re going to have a lot of giveaways,” said Donna Curran, Maple Leaf Festival Committee member. “Our announcers at the festival stage at High and Eighth streets will have a trivia contest and games every hour, so people will want to look for that.”

The committee’s recognition of the 60th festival is causing some confusion, Curran said.

“People ask me, ‘How can this be the 60th year if the first festival was in 1958?'” she said. “If you count the first year, this is the 60th festival.”

Another Baldwin City milestone is being recognized with the festival’s theme, “Ride the Rails to Baldwin City.”

“The reason we chose that theme is this is Midland Railway’s 30th anniversary,” she said of the excursion tourist line that operations out of Baldwin City. “Midland Railway President Bryan Sanders will be grand marshal of the parade.”

The Maple Leaf Festival has a parade, carnival, quilt show and numerous entertainment options, but its central attraction has always been its arts and craft show. Curran, head of the craft show committee, said the expected 30,000 festival visitors will find a multitude of shopping opportunities from the booths that will line 13 blocks of Baldwin City’s downtown streets. Booths will be open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.

The festival will have 340 booths the MLF committee accepted and about another 75 from the concurrent Baldwin City Business and Professional Women’s arts and crafts fair, Curran said.

Organizing the festival with many booths might sound like a logistical nightmare, but Curran said the job was made easier by the number of vendors who commit for another year before loading up their booths as the yearly festival winds down.

“As many as 80 percent of our (vendors) re-commit before leaving,” she said.

Among the new vendors this year will be Dan Besco, a Paola wood carver, who will carve a bench Friday night in the downtown park in the 700 block of High Street to donate to the community, Curran said. Those partial to crimson and blue will want to look for his booth Saturday and Sunday.

“He carves a lot of Jayhawks and wildlife,” she said.

There was a slight decrease in the number of food booths this year, but back are a number of longtime and popular vendors, including Baker University Sigma Chi Fraternity’s turkey leg stand, the Baker baseball team’s Polish sausage booth, Annunciation Parish’s hamburger stand and the Baldwin City Lions Club’s funnel cake stand. The BPW will again offer a food tent at the corners of Eighth and Chapel streets where festival visitors can relax as they enjoy a meal from adjacent food vendors, while watching entertainers performing on the nearby stage, she said.

In addition to booths, Baldwin City downtown businesses have the opportunity to vend on the sidewalks in front of their stores, and many businesses have specials to entice festival visitors, Curran said.

Once in Baldwin City, visitors will find many of the downtown streets closed for the festival and parking restricted on others.

With that in mind, out-of-town visitors are encouraged to park in outlying parking lots and ride free buses to and from the festival.

Parking will be available at two elementary schools on Baldwin City’s western edge, Baldwin Elementary School Primary Center at 500 Lawrence St., and Baldwin Elementary School Intermediate Center at 100 Bullpup Drive. The Primary Center is a short drive south of U.S. 56 on Lincoln Street. The Intermediate Center is visible from the highway at the intersection of Bullpup Drive. Signage will be posted directing motorists to the park-and-ride locations.

Another park-and-ride option, which would be more convenient to those arriving via CR 1055 or U.S. 56 from the east, is the Baldwin High School parking lot at 415 Eisenhower St. Again, signage will be posted directing motorists to the lot.

Parking nearer the festival will be available at Baker University lots.

Local community and school groups work the parking lots as fundraisers, so there will be a nominal fee. The Maple Leaf Festival Committee leaves it to the groups to set the prices, but they generally charge $5 or $10 per day.

Once visitors arrive at the downtown core of the festival, trams will be available to shuffle shoppers to more distant booths or activities.

Correction: A posting with Sunday’s Maple Leaf Festival preview was based on incorrect information and has been removed. There will be no guided tours at the Black Jack Battlefield associated with the Maple Leaf Festival.