Three of Great Falls' community institutions are on the calendar for Saturday, October 17, and most of the day happens on or near Walker Road. The Great Falls Farmers Market opens at 756 Walker Road in the morning. The 23rd annual Great Falls Studios Studio Tour lists its biggest group of artists at the same address. Then Celebrate Great Falls puts a free concert on the Great Falls Village Field behind the Post Office. Great Falls Park, the place most people picture when they hear the town's name, is the harder outing that weekend. The village has the easier one.
The day in order
The schedule lines up so you can do all three without much driving:
- 10 a.m. The farmers market opens at 756 Walker Road. It runs year-round every Saturday until 1:30 p.m.
- 10 a.m. Studio doors open across town for the Studio Tour, which runs 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.
- 4 p.m. The 250 Festival starts on the Village Field with live music from Hello Cleveland and Radio Vinyl. It runs until 7 p.m.
- Sunday, October 18 The Studio Tour runs a second full day, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The tour and the festival overlap for an hour, from 4 to 5 p.m. If you're planning to see a few studios before the music starts, keep that hour in mind.
Stop #2 is where the market already is
The tour map lists its stops by number, and #2 is the busiest one. Painters Joyce Lee, Theresa Miller and Jill Banks, mixed-media and painting artist Roberta Beasley, and photographer Jeremy Hansen are all listed at 756 Walker Road. Painter Layla Gray is at 776-B Walker Road, and Arts of Great Falls Art School is at 756-C. That's six artists and a school on one stretch of Walker Road, at the same address as the Saturday market.
Stop #11 is just up the road at 790 Walker Road, where jewelry and photography artist Dee Leggett shares space with painter Kay Walsh. Leggett has scheduled a jewelry-making demonstration for 3 p.m. Saturday and a talk on nature photography for 3 p.m. Sunday. So a morning at the market can turn into an afternoon of studio visits with no extra driving.
The organizers describe the tour as a choose-your-own-adventure. There's no required starting point, and road signs guide visitors to each studio. In practice, the Walker Road group works as a starting point anyway, because the market draws people there every Saturday.
Where the tour spreads out
The official roster lists 31 artists plus Arts of Great Falls School. Most of them work outside the village, at studios spread around Great Falls, plus one stop across the line in McLean. The brochure lists painting, watercolor, pastels, fiber arts, collage, sculpture, gold leaf, pottery, jewelry, photography, printmaking, woodwork and wood carving. The scheduled demonstrations are the best reason to drive to the outer stops:
- Laura Nichols, pottery. An outdoor raku and alternative-firing demonstration Saturday from 1 to 3 p.m., then a chance to try the wheel Sunday from 1 to 3 p.m.
- Stacie Loftus, pottery. Visitors can try the wheel Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., and she demonstrates throwing and hand-building Sunday during the same hours.
- Robin Smith, pottery. Wheel-throwing for visitors and demonstrations all day, both days.
- Will Tuthill, Toad Stone Studio. Live lithography and Japanese woodblock printing, hands-on printing and bookmark-making, and letterpress on request.
- Jennifer Duncan, Gray Barn Studio. A "dueling artists" still-life face-off with a fellow painter, plus a postcard-collage table that runs all day both days.
- Michael Long, wood carving. A small carving area open both days.
With three potters running wheels and kilns, this year's tour leans hands-on, and much of it is free for anyone willing to get clay on their sleeves. Saturday's peak demo hours run from late morning to midafternoon. If you hit the Walker Road group early and the pottery studios after lunch, you can still get to the Village Field by 4.
Local businesses are part of the tour too. The sponsor list includes Tom Tucker Fine Art and Dianne Van Volkenburg at the Gold level. Silver sponsors include The Old Brogue, Broadway Gallery, Mookie's BBQ and Leslie Anderson Interiors. L'Auberge Chez François, Blue Chicken Bakery, Spearmint and The Wine Outlets are among the Bronze sponsors. Tom Tucker also has his own studio on the tour, at stop #18.
The evening belongs to the Village Field
Celebrate Great Falls calls the 250 Festival a one-time special event. The bands play on a big stage in front of the large tree on the Village Field, and admission is free. Smoking Kow BBQ and Chick-fil-A are bringing food trucks. Organizers suggest bringing blankets or lawn chairs and getting dinner from the trucks or from local restaurants. Pets and alcohol aren't allowed on the field. Lafayette Federal Credit Union and Fairfax 250 are the event sponsors.
The no-pets rule is worth remembering if you've had a dog with you at the market that morning. Dogs get their own event two weeks later. The Halloween Spooktacular on the Village Centre Green on October 31 includes a dog parade and costume contest from 3 to 4 p.m., followed by trick-or-treating from 5 to 7 p.m.
Great Falls Lodge, a block from the action
If you'd rather eat at a table than off a food truck, the newest option is Great Falls Lodge Bar & Grill at 9835 Georgetown Pike in Great Falls Center, in the space El Tio Tex-Mex Grill used to occupy. FFXnow reported that owner and chef Neel Kamal planned a soft launch for September 7 after Fairfax County's permitting and inspection process "took longer than expected." Service started with dinner from 3 to 10 p.m., with lunch and happy hours to follow. It's the first Virginia location for a concept that started with the Urbana Lodge and Clarks Lodge in Maryland, and it pairs American bar food with Asian flavors. The soft-launch menu covers burgers, flatbreads, baby back ribs, fish and chips, Maryland crab cakes and jambalaya.
The restaurant's own menu page still describes a curated soft-launch menu and says the full dining experience is expected this October. It also lists weekend brunch on Saturday and Sunday from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. We haven't found a dated announcement that the full menu has launched yet. Check before you go if you have a specific dish in mind. A Saturday brunch there fits neatly between the market and the afternoon studio demos.
Why the park is the harder outing this month
The tour page notes that the event falls just as fall foliage "is erupting in color." Peak color also tends to draw the biggest crowds to Great Falls Park. As of a National Park Service alert posted September 29, 2026, the park's public restrooms and drinking-water systems are closed until further notice. Portable toilets are in the Main Parking Lot and where the Old Carriage Road Trail meets the Matildaville Trail. The same page says the Aid Box climbing area is temporarily closed after a rock topple. It also warns that the entrance at Georgetown Pike and Old Dominion Drive will temporarily close when the lots fill, and reopen as spaces free up. The visitor center at 703-757-3101 has parking updates.
The NPS fee page lists $20 per private vehicle and $10 for each visitor 16 or older arriving on foot or by bike, with children under 16 free, and the park doesn't accept cash. Riverbend Park, the county-run alternative upriver, has posted its own notice that parking had hit capacity and to expect waits and crowded trails. According to the Great Falls Citizens Association's 2026 annual report, a proposed weekend parking fee at Riverbend never started, and a $2 donation is encouraged.
If you want to see the falls on a peak weekend, a weekday morning is the better bet. Saturday the 17th is set up better for the village: a market, two clusters of studios on Walker Road, pottery wheels running across town and a free concert at dusk, with no entrance gate to wait at.
Lauren Liess and our team at Property Collective spend a lot of time thinking about how handmade work changes a room, and the Studio Tour is one of our favorite weekends of the year. If you find a piece on October 17 or 18 and want help deciding where it goes in your Great Falls home, schedule a call.
