On September 6, a tandem jump team lifted off from Connecticut Parachutists for the second annual running of its tandem jump event, one more reminder that Ellington's sky gets busier before its sidewalks do. But the real scheduling puzzle is still ahead. It's the one on September 19.
On Saturday, September 19, two things that usually happen in the same rough direction are happening on opposite sides of the town line at the same time. Lee's Car Show & RV Swap Meet sets up on West Road in Ellington. The Four Town Fair, running its full four-day stretch from September 17 through 20 at the Somers fairgrounds, has its own Saturday parade and antique and classic car show going at the same hour. For a town that has spent decades treating the fair as the automatic answer to "what's happening this weekend," this year the answer splits in two, and it splits inside Ellington's own borders.
That split is worth sitting with, because it says something about how much has changed on Ellington's own turf this year, not just at the fairgrounds a few miles over.
Two Car Shows, One Saturday
Lee's Car Show & RV Swap Meet runs at 171 West Road, well inside town, drawing the kind of crowd that would otherwise be making the short drive to Somers. Meanwhile the Four Town Fair's own antique and classic car show, one of its recurring annual features, runs as part of the same weekend, with the fair's parade stepping off Saturday morning at the Egypt Road fairgrounds.
For years, a car-minded Ellington household had one obvious plan for that Saturday: pack up and head to Somers. This year they have to choose, or split the day, because West Road is putting on its own version of the same thing. That's a small scheduling collision, but it's the kind of detail that only shows up if you're actually tracking the town's calendar rather than assuming this September looks like every other one.
A Fair That's Half Ellington's to Begin With
It's worth remembering that the Four Town Fair isn't really an outside event Ellington attends. It's one Ellington co-owns. The fair is Connecticut's oldest continuous agricultural fair, running since 1838, and it rotates its identity among the four founding towns, Somers, East Windsor, Enfield, and Ellington, even though Somers has been its permanent home for generations. This year's run, September 17 through 20 at 56 Egypt Road, keeps the traditional lineup: livestock shows, horse and oxen pulls, doodlebug pulls, a skillet toss, and the antique and classic car show that overlaps with Lee's on Saturday.
Thursday runs 4 to 9 p.m., Friday 4 to 11 p.m., Saturday 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., and Sunday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Weekend passes cover all four days, and kids 12 and under get in free. None of that is new information if you've been going for years. What's worth noticing is that Ellington's own name is stitched into the fair's founding charter, not just its attendance sheet, which is part of why the Saturday overlap with Lee's feels less like a scheduling accident and more like two Ellington traditions briefly stepping on each other's toes.
Main Street Looks Different Heading to the Fairgrounds
If your route to the fair runs through the center of town, you've probably already noticed the storefronts have changed. No Coast Taqueria opened its first brick and mortar location at 12 Main Street, in the space that used to be Holiday Pizza, sitting just behind Kloter Farms and its familiar sixteen-acre display park. It's easy orientation for anyone who's ever driven past Kloter's sheds and gazebos looking for the turn.
A few doors down, Wen Ming House has settled in as the town's go-to for Chinese and Japanese food, the kind of dependable dinner stop that doesn't make headlines but changes what a Tuesday night actually looks like. Add in Ellington Pizza Restaurant on Windsorville Road for the traditional option, and the fair-week dinner run out of Main Street now covers three genuinely different cuisines instead of the same rotation from a few years back.
None of this is a coincidence tied to the fair. It's just that fair week is when most of the town is already driving that corridor, so the new options are harder to miss than they might be in a quieter month.
Soapstone Gets There First
While the fairgrounds and Main Street are pulling attention this month, the hills on the north side of town are already ahead of the rest of the state. Shenipsit State Forest, which spreads across 7,170 acres in Ellington, Somers, and Stafford, holds the trailhead for Soapstone Mountain off Gulf Road, and the payoff at the top is an observation tower with views stretching to the Connecticut River Valley and, on a clear day, the Springfield skyline.
Connecticut's Department of Energy and Environmental Protection puts the statewide foliage window at roughly October 3 through November 8, but that's an average across a state that changes color from the northeast corner down to the shoreline over more than a month. The northeast corner, where Shenipsit sits, is consistently one of the first parts of the state to turn, which means Ellington's own hills are showing real color while towns closer to the coast are still green. You don't need a foliage road trip to Litchfield County this year. Soapstone gets there on its own schedule, usually well ahead of the rest of Connecticut.
The Two Weekends, Side by Side
Laid out together, September's calendar in Ellington reads less like a quiet stretch before Halloween and more like a town running two overlapping traditions at once:
- September 6 – Connecticut Parachutists hosted the second annual running of its tandem jump event.
- September 17 to 20 – The Four Town Fair runs its full four-day schedule at 56 Egypt Road in Somers, with the parade and car show landing on Saturday.
- September 19 – Lee's Car Show & RV Swap Meet runs simultaneously on West Road in Ellington, pulling the same crowd the fair usually claims on its own.
- Early October – Soapstone Mountain and the surrounding Shenipsit hills typically hit color before most of the rest of the state does.
Individually, none of these is unusual for an Ellington September. Together, they mean the town isn't just attending its neighbors' bigger events this year. It's running its own version of most of them at the same time.
What This Actually Changes
For years, the honest answer to "what's happening in Ellington this fall" was "go to Somers." That's still partly true, the fair is still the fair, and it's still worth the short drive. But this September the town's own calendar caught up to it. A car show that used to send people out of town now keeps them in it. A dinner stop that used to mean the same three options now has a taco counter and a Chinese and Japanese kitchen added to the rotation. And a foliage hike that used to require a trip to the northwest hills is sitting on Gulf Road, usually turning before anywhere else in the state.
None of that means Ellington stopped being a town that leans on its neighbors for its biggest weekend of the year. It means that this particular September, the town's own version of that weekend is finally competitive with it.
If you're watching Ellington for reasons beyond this fall's calendar, whether you're weighing a move here or already own a piece of it and are curious what that means for your own plans, Diana Brown has spent two decades tracking towns like this one block by block, not just season by season. Reach out to schedule a market consultation when you're ready to talk specifics.
