For years, if you walked into Maria Gloyd's greenhouse in Paw Paw and asked about pawpaw trees, she couldn't help you. She didn't sell them. She didn't know much about them either, which put her in an odd spot for someone running a plant nursery in a town named after the fruit growing wild along its riverbanks. Visitors kept asking anyway, and eventually asked a bigger question: shouldn't a town called Paw Paw have a festival for the thing it's named after?
Gloyd got tired of not having an answer. So she went looking for one, and that search is why the second Saturday of September now looks different in Paw Paw than it did just two years ago.
From One Unanswered Question to a Regional Draw
Gloyd's search led her to Todd McCree, who runs Great Escape Farms in Romney and specializes in unusual edible plants. McCree knew someone who actually could answer the pawpaw question better than almost anyone in the country: Neal Peterson, owner of Peterson Pawpaws in Harpers Ferry and a well-known name in pawpaw genetics and cultivation. Between the three of them, an idea that started as one shopkeeper's frustration turned into an actual event.
The first Pawpaw Festival ran on September 14, 2024, in the town park. Organizers didn't expect much. Current festival director Emma Kesner has described the early planning in modest terms, a low-key gathering to give the kids something to do on a Saturday. Then half the country showed up, which was pretty cool.
That gap between expectation and turnout is the part worth sitting with if you live here. Paw Paw's population sits at roughly 410 people according to the 2020 census. A festival built for a town that size, drawing visitors from across the region in its very first year, isn't a hometown-scale event anymore even though it still runs like one. That distinction matters if you're planning your Saturday around it.
What Actually Happens on September 12
This year's festival, its third, returns to Paw Paw Schools on Saturday, September 12, running 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free.
Neal Peterson and Todd McCree are back as featured presenters, leading talks and a guided plant walk for anyone who wants to go beyond tasting the fruit and actually understand what grows well here and why. Live music runs through the day, including a set from T.J. Simpson. Local artisans and food vendors set up alongside pawpaw tree sales, and the day includes kids' activities like a bounce house and face painting for families who want more than a lecture on native fruit trees.
Event listings put expected attendance near 1,000 people this year. Against a town of 410 residents, that's not a neighborhood cookout. It's closer to three visitors for every person who actually lives here, which is worth knowing before you assume you can swing by casually between errands.
Why a Fruit You Can't Buy in Stores Still Pulls a Crowd
Part of what makes this festival work is that pawpaws genuinely don't show up anywhere else. The fruit bruises easily and stays fresh only a few days after ripening, so it almost never reaches grocery store shelves no matter where you live. If you want to taste one, you generally have to know someone who grows them, forage for them yourself, or show up somewhere like this.
Pawpaws grow naturally from southern Ontario down to northern Florida and west into the Mississippi Valley, and West Virginia's woodlands are squarely in that range. The trees tend to cluster along streams and shaded hillsides, which describes a lot of ground around Paw Paw itself. The flavor gets compared to banana, mango, and vanilla depending on who you ask, and for a lot of festival visitors this is literally the first time they've tasted the fruit at all.
That combination of short shelf life and total absence from supermarkets is exactly why the festival has teeth beyond a typical harvest fair. You're not selling people on a novelty. You're giving them access to something they can't get any other way, which is a different kind of draw than most small-town festivals manage.
The Rest of the Saturday
If you live in town and you're planning to walk down rather than drive, a few things are worth knowing before the day arrives.
- Parking fills at the school lot well before the 10 a.m. start once a crowd this size is expected, so arriving early buys you a much easier morning.
- There's no ATM on site, so if you're planning to buy from the craft or food vendors, grab cash beforehand at the local bank in town.
- Peterson and McCree's talks and the guided plant walk tend to draw the biggest crowds of the day, more than the music or the vendor tables, so if you want a seat, don't save that part for late afternoon.
- The Paw Paw Tunnel, a few miles from downtown and the most recognizable landmark on the old C&O Canal, makes a natural add-on if you want to stretch the day into an afternoon walk after the festival winds down.
None of this requires a plan more complicated than showing up with a little more lead time than you'd give a normal Saturday errand. But a festival that started as one woman's answer to a question she couldn't answer has outgrown the assumption that you can just wander over whenever.
A Small Town's Biggest Day
What's easy to miss if you've lived here through all three years is how fast this went from local curiosity to regional fixture. Three people who happened to know each other, a garden center owner, a specialty farmer in Romney, and a genetics expert in Harpers Ferry, built something that now pulls in roughly two and a half times the town's own population in a single day. That's not a knock on the town. It's a sign that Paw Paw's name, and the fruit behind it, means something to people well outside Morgan County.
For residents, the practical takeaway is simple: treat September 12 like the busiest Saturday of your year, because for a town this size, it is. For everyone else who reads about Paw Paw from a distance and starts wondering what it would be like to actually live somewhere with a festival like this, that curiosity tends to lead to bigger questions about the town itself.
If that describes you, Kesecker Realty, Inc. can tell you more about what daily life looks like here beyond one Saturday in September.
