Raw States
Historic Smithville Irish Festival
Galloway, NJ · Arts & Culture
- When
- October 10–11, 2026
- Where
- Village Greene, 615 E Moss Mill Road · Galloway · NJ
- Cost
- Not confirmed
- Status
- Confirmed from the organizer's published schedule
Historic Smithville's Irish Festival takes over the Village Greene each October with step dancing, Celtic bands and Irish food and craft vendors. The free festival runs across a weekend at the restored 19th century village in Galloway Township. It has grown into one of South Jersey's larger Irish heritage gatherings outside the shore towns.
The history within reach
- The Jersey Devil4.6 mi
The story is that a Mrs Leeds of the Pine Barrens, expecting her thirteenth child and sick of it, cried that this one could be the devil, and it was born, grew wings and a horse's head, and flew up the chimney into the woods, where it has been blamed for three centuries of strange tracks and killed livestock.
One of the oldest continuously operating wineries in the country, and one of the very few that stayed open right through Prohibition, legally, by selling a 22-percent 'medicinal' wine tonic through drugstores across the nation, with a warning on the label that it must not be chilled and left to stand or it would, regrettably, ferment.
- Absecon Lighthouse7.5 mi
The tallest lighthouse in New Jersey stands in the middle of the city now, hemmed in by streets, built after a run of wrecks on the Absecon shoals killed hundreds of immigrants within sight of land.
The first boardwalk in the world, laid down so bathers would stop tracking sand into the hotels and railcars, and it turned a sandbar into the country's playground, piers out over the water, rolling chairs, the first Ferris wheel after Chicago.
- Monopoly's streets7.9 mi
The board that sold more than a quarter of a billion copies is a map of this one town, Baltic and Mediterranean the cheap blocks near the bay, Boardwalk and Park Place the expensive end by the sea.