Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
Dr. James Durward wanted to fix a problem. It was the mid-1970s, and Estes Park emptied out the second Labor Day passed. So he built a Scottish festival to keep people coming up the canyon into September. Fifty years later, that festival is the most attended event in Estes Park, and this weekend it turns 50 without him.
Durward ran it for 43 years. He died in May 2023. His daughter, Peggy Sue Durward Young, took over as President and CEO in 2020 after more than a decade working right alongside him. So this is not a stranger inheriting a machine. This is someone who learned it at the source.
The 50th Longs Peak Scottish-Irish Highland Festival runs Friday through Sunday, September 11 to 13, 2026, at the Estes Park Event Complex, 1209 Manford Ave. Festival Field opens at 9 a.m. all three days. Organizers are bracing for as many as 20,000 people a day, and Young expects Saturday to be the monster.
Here is the part people are talking about in Estes. There is no downtown parade this year. It got cut in 2025 for cost reasons, and organizers cited unforeseen circumstances for 2026. So if you are bringing the family up expecting to line Elkhorn Avenue and watch pipers march past the shops, adjust your plan. The action lives at the Event Complex now.
I mean, a parade is a heavy lift. Road closures, staffing, insurance, the whole thing. But it still stings for anyone who grew up on it. Two years running now.
Young has a phrase for how she runs this thing. She talks about adding "spokes to the wheel" of what her father built, not reinventing it. And you can see that in the 2026 lineup, because she is stacking on new stuff without touching the core.
Saturday, September 12, the festival hosts the U.S. Women's Pro Highland Games Championships. Top professional female athletes, throwing for a national title, right here. That is a real get.
The Estes Park International Tattoo is also having a moment. This is its 40th edition, with more than 200 performers. Two shows: 7 p.m. Friday and 5:30 p.m. Saturday. The roster reads like a passport. The U.S. Navy Ceremonial Guard. The 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing. Wales' Gwent and Powys ACF Military Band. Australia's 51 ACU Swan Regiment Drums and Pipes. And the Colorado Brass Band holding it down for the home team.
Two special guests are worth your attention. Actor Adrian Paul, the guy from "Highlander," is leading Sword Experience sessions Saturday and Sunday. And Coinneach MacLeod, the author and BBC presenter better known as the Hebridean Baker, is making his first appearance at the festival.
The timing on this is honestly wild. The festival is 50. Colorado turns 150. The United States hits 250. All three landing in the same window, all three folded into this one event.
And it does not stop there. This is also the 25th anniversary of September 11, and the festival opens on the 11th. Organizers are recognizing that, partnering with a local stair climb, and Saturday's program includes a tribute and a bell ringing. Read the date on the top of this festival again and it lands differently.
If you have never made the drive, this is the core of it. Highland athletics, the big burly guys tossing the caber. Highland dance. Pipes and drums everywhere, all day. Highland cattle, the shaggy orange ones with the bangs that Hayley will not leave without photographing. Dog demonstrations. And more than 100 vendors selling Celtic crafts and imported goods, which is dangerous for the wallet if you like a good wool sweater.
Estes Park bills itself as the "Celtic Capital of America," and this festival is described as the largest celebration of Scottish and Irish communities in North America. That is a big claim for a mountain town of a few thousand people. The crowd numbers back it up.
Everything Durward built was aimed at one thing: stretching the season. And that mission never really stopped. Estes lives and dies on visitor traffic, which is exactly why the housing market up there behaves the way it does. Short-term rental demand props up a chunk of the values, second homes make up a real slice of the inventory, and a September weekend pulling 20,000 people a day is the whole thesis in one snapshot. When we talk with folks at Symbio Homes about buying in Estes, this is the conversation. You are not just buying a house. You are buying into a town that has spent 50 years teaching the world to show up after Labor Day.
So. Fifty years. A founder gone, his daughter carrying it, a parade missing and a championship added. If you have been meaning to make this one, this is the year. Festival Field, 9 a.m., 1209 Manford Ave. Go.