Last fall, the Chappell Hill Historical Society announced it was done. After 48 years, the Scarecrow Festival was ending, and the reasons were the ones every small-town volunteer board eventually names out loud: rising costs, thinning volunteer rolls. If you live here, you probably heard about it at Bevers before you saw it in print. Ten weeks later the story flipped. BirdDog announced on their Facebook Page that they are bringing the Chappell Hill Scarecrow Festival back, and this year, they are adding live music.
That single change reshapes the October weekend more than any lineup announcement suggests. The event you knew as an antiques and scarecrow-display festival is now a two-day music festival with vendors around it, produced by a company headquartered on Main Street, on a compressed timeline. For residents, the practical questions are different this year. Where do you eat when Bevers is closed on Saturday. Which stops on Main are worth doing before the crowd arrives. And what happens the following weekend, when Highway 290 fills up with Round Top traffic.
What actually changed
The dates are set. Saturday, October 10th, 2026, 10:00am to 6:00pm, and Sunday the 11th on the same schedule. BirdDog assumes coordination of all festival activities for the newly rebranded Chappell Hill Scarecrow Music Festival, debuting October 10–11. BirdDog is a company that assists landowners with land management, and they also host guided hunting and fishing trips, with headquarters in downtown Chappell Hill.
The mission statement, from BirdDog co-founder Jonathan Lusk, is worth reading once in full because it tells you the tone the new operators are aiming for:
The Scarecrow Festival has long been a Chappell Hill tradition, and we're honored to help revive it alongside the Chappell Hill Historical Society and the community that's kept it alive for generations.
Proceeds still return to the town. All proceeds benefit the Chappell Hill Historical Society, Fire Department, and Chamber of Commerce. If you have donated time or money to any of the three in the past, this is the same fundraising engine, running on a different chassis.
The lineup, at a glance
Ten acts across two days on three stages. If you have been to the festival before, this is the part that has no precedent. The Saturday roster:
- Roger Creager
- Cody Hibbard
- The Flinns
- Joey McGee
- Cul de Sac
Sunday's entertainment lineup includes Bri Bagwell, Black Cat Choir, Cathey Bolin & Henry Williams, Cooper Mohrmann, and Taylor Graves. Vendor count is set at 100+ vendors, which is a step down from the more than 250 juried exhibitors the old format ran, and a signal that the center of gravity has moved from booths to stages.
What Main Street is doing about it
Bevers is the tell. Scarecrow Music Festival 2026 October 10-11 Bevers will follow normal business hours that weekend: closed Saturday and open Sunday 10-3. If Saturday lunch has been part of your festival routine since the Bush administration, that plan needs a rewrite. The restaurant has been at 5162 Main since 1985, when the Bevers family started making a home-away-from-home for everyone who stops by for a bite to eat, and Alejandra Ray, the current owner, is a story most out-of-town visitors do not know. Alejandra Ray arrived to Texas from Colima, Mexico. In 1987, she made her way to Chappell Hill and found a job at the café. When the restaurant's pastry chef walked out one day in 1989, Ann recalls, she turned to Alejandra and said, "You're my new pie lady."
That pie production is not a rounding error. During the holidays, the restaurant sells 400 pies a week; in a slow week, about 200 go out the door. Reserve your Sunday slice on the way to church, or the front case will be a picked-over version of itself by 1:30.
Sunday brunch, for what it is worth, is the sleeper move. Fewer tourists, most of the festival vendors are packing up on Poplar Street, and the kitchen is at full staffing. It is the closest thing the weekend offers to a normal Chappell Hill morning.
The stops that reward you during a festival weekend
Every October the Historical Society Museum picks up traffic from festival visitors, which means the folk art collection gets seen by people who did not plan to see it. Locals should treat that inverted: go on the quiet half of Sunday, when the crowd is at the stages. Look for the rotating Reverend Johnnie Swearingen paintings. If you have a ranch connection or an interest in that generation of Washington County land, his cows and bulls come out around June and July, because that is when the museum puts the ranching-themed paintings all out, so October rotates toward his other subjects. Free admission, donations welcomed.
The Chappell Hill Bank is the other detour worth putting on your Sunday list, even if you already bank there. The Chappell Hill Bank is said to be the country's oldest continuously operating bank still in its original building, circa 1907. The oak-and-brass teller cages are still in place. Very few residents ever look up while they are cashing a check.
For deeper history, two more stops are within a short walk:
- The Stagecoach Inn. The Stagecoach Inn of Chappell Hill is a historic stagecoach inn at Main and Chestnut Streets, built in 1850 by Mary Elizabeth Haller, the founder of Chappell Hill. Mary and her husband Jacob Haller, the town's first postmaster, built the stately 14-room Greek Revival inn along the road from Houston to Austin, where some of Texas' first stagecoach lines would stop for the night. Still operating as a B&B.
- The Old Rock Store. Opens only by appointment, but well worth the scheduling effort. Inside, you'll find two hand-appliqued fabric murals, each six feet tall and 30 feet long, created by local women in the 1970s to depict Chappell Hill's history.
And if you want a Sunday drive that will surprise a houseguest, take FM 1155 north to the Monastery Miniature Horse Farm. This order of Franciscan Poor Clare nuns fled Castro's Cuba in 1961 and found refuge in Corpus Christi before moving to Chappell Hill in 1984 to raise miniature horses. Every Chappell Hill resident should be able to answer the "what do you mean, miniature horse monastery" question at least once.
The next weekend is not a break
Here is the piece most residents underweight. Scarecrow Music Festival closes on Sunday the 11th. Round Top opens four days later. The Round Top Fall Show 2026 runs October 17–31, 2026, 15 days across 48+ venues in Round Top, Warrenton, and Carmine, Texas, and the two largest anchors run Blue Hills October 17-31, and the Big Red Barn and Continental Tent October 25-31.
If you commute west on 290 or take FM 1155 south, plan on longer trips for most of the second half of October. Navigating this event can be a little overwhelming as the Round Top, Texas population swells from 90 residents to tens of thousands during the event. According to Dewain Belgard, Carmine Antiques Shop owner, at peak traffic times, it can take a shopper an hour to travel 7 miles from Round Top to Warrenton, Texas. That backup radiates. Grocery runs, doctor appointments, and school pickups should assume an extra fifteen to twenty minutes for the last two weekends of the month.
The upside is that Chappell Hill sits on the approach side of that trip. Anyone driving in from Houston to shop Round Top passes through Main Street. Local shops and food stops get a second traffic wave the following week, which is why the Scarecrow Music Festival and the Antiques Fair calendar are worth reading together, not separately.
A resident playbook for October 10–11
Think of the two days in shifts:
- Saturday morning before 10. Coffee at home, walk downtown before the stages open. Poplar Street and behind the Visitor's Center will be the vendor spine. This is the last window Main Street will feel like a normal Saturday.
- Saturday midday. Bevers is closed. Pack a lunch, or plan a picnic under the oaks near the museum grounds. The Historical Society Museum itself opens Wednesday through Saturday.
- Saturday afternoon into evening. Roger Creager is the anchor act. If you have out-of-town family in, this is the ticket to hand them.
- Sunday morning. Bevers 10 to 3, and pies go fast. Order a whole one on Friday if you want a specific flavor.
- Sunday afternoon. Bri Bagwell on the music side, or a quiet loop of the Chappell Hill Bank, Stagecoach Inn exterior, and Old Rock Store if you called ahead.
The pattern is the same one Chappell Hill has always run on: the festival is a fundraiser first, a tradition second, and a very good excuse to walk your own Main Street with fresh eyes. That has not changed. What has changed is who is running it, what the schedule looks like, and how the surrounding October calendar stacks against it. Residents who plan around those three variables will have a better weekend than anyone driving in from Houston with an old memory of the event.
If you have been thinking about how the fall calendar affects the way you use, sell, or add on to your Chappell Hill property, the team at The Lindi Camaron Team lives and works in this corridor year-round. Reach out anytime, and we will bring the same local read to your questions that we bring to our own weekends here.
