Bayfield, Wisconsin: Lake Superior’s Apple Country Earns a USA Today Nod for Best Harvest Festival

On Lake Superior’s southern shore, the ten orchards of Bayfield, Wisconsin kick off harvest season each September, months before most of the country sees its first colored leaf. This October 2-4, the region’s 64th annual Bayfield Apple Festival is expected to draw more than 60,000 visitors, and USA Today just named it one of the 10 best fall harvest festivals in the nation.

Ten Orchards, One Early Start to Fall

Bayfield’s ten orchards line the Lake Superior shoreline as part of the region’s “Fruit Loop,” where the lake’s microclimate lets apples and berries thrive further north than almost anywhere else in the Midwest. Visitors can pick their own apples, sample heirloom varieties, and warm up with cider doughnuts rolled in cinnamon sugar, a local specialty that appears at orchard stands as the season opens in early September. Because the orchards sit at the top of the state, Bayfield also marks the starting point of Wisconsin’s six-week fall color progression, putting its hillsides in peak color before the rest of the state has even begun to turn.

Six Decades of Apple Festival

The Bayfield Apple Festival traces back to 1962, when local orchard owner Jim Erickson, fresh off selling apples from the back of his truck in Duluth, decided the town needed a celebration of its own. That first festival drew about 5,000 people; the 2026 edition, running October 2-4, is the 64th and is expected to bring more than 60,000 visitors from across the Midwest for a Grand Parade down Rittenhouse Avenue, more than 60 food booths, live music, an Apple Pie and Dessert Contest, and the crowning of the Apple Festival Queen.

A Small Town With National Recognition

USA Today has named the Bayfield Apple Festival one of the 10 best fall harvest festivals in the country, and Wisconsin Trails Magazine calls it the state’s best festival outright. Bayfield itself carries similar honors: the Chicago Tribune has called it “the Best Little Town in the Midwest,” and Smithsonian Magazine has listed it among America’s best small towns, recognition that has made this stretch of Lake Superior shoreline a fall destination well beyond Wisconsin’s borders.

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