It was back – and exponentially bigger – than last year, with organizers of the Oakdale Fall Festival putting on the family-focused gathering on Saturday, Oct. 4 in Wood Park. Food booths, merchandise vendors, clubs and organizations, bounce houses, music and more were featured, with the festival stretching throughout Wood Park along Yosemite Avenue and even spilling in to the area of the skate park and stage. That was where several bounce houses were set up.
Last year, the festival was hosted at Kerr Park east of the city but for 2025, the goal was to bring it in to town.
“We originally wanted it here but last year what a lot of people didn’t know was we put it on within two months,” explained Michael Gall, one of the coordinators of the festival. “We thought of the idea (last year) two months prior … this time we actually had a year to prepare.”
The festival ran from 2 pm. to 9 p.m. Saturday at Wood Park and Gall said it looked as though within the first hour, they had matched the attendance from last year. The Wood Park area allowed for more vendors, a centralized location and easy access.
Performers were on two different stages and many of the participating vendors were local businesses and service organizations.
“We’re really just bringing the full town into it,” Gall explained.
Founders of Oakdale Party Rentals, Jonas Graham and Brody Lev, were still in high school when they started the local business that oversees the event and they also branched out into the Oakdale Autumn Gathering business as they got involved in putting on the festival. Graham has since graduated, with the Class of 2024, but Lev is still at OHS, where he is a senior this year.
“Me and my partner Brody, we started this company when I was a senior in high school and he was only a sophomore; we’ve grown it into something that we put on festivals every year and we always help with the town for their Christmas shows and we’re growing the company every month, lots of things going on.”
Months of wok went into getting this year’s edition of the Fall Festival ready for the masses, Graham added, and he was extremely pleased to see the big crowd on hand just a little over an hour into the event on Saturday.
Also, vendors at the festival were asked to provide a raffle item, with the raffle drawing proceeds benefitting the non-profit Care 2 U organization, which provides free dental clinics for those in need. The next event is scheduled later this month, coming up on Saturday, Oct. 25 at 1480 Poplar St., Oakdale, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
More information about the program – and how to support it – is available by visiting care2uts.com
