St. Charles Scarecrow Fest

St. Charles, IL · Quirky

When: October 9–11, 2026
Where: Downtown St. Charles, near Pottawatomie Park · St. Charles · IL
Cost: Not confirmed
Status: Confirmed from the organizer's published schedule

A downtown St. Charles tradition with more than 120 handmade, judged scarecrow displays filling the streets alongside a juried craft fair and carnival. Now in its 41st year, it is regularly cited by regional press as one of the state's best fall festivals. It draws visitors from across the Fox Valley and greater Chicago area each October.

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The history within reach

The Arcada Theatre opens for silent pictures and vaudeville0.2 mi
Lester Norris, a Chicago Tribune cartoonist who settled in St.
Hotel Baker and its lighted dance floor over the Fox River dam0.4 mi
Edward Baker came into a fortune late in life and spent part of it putting up what he called the biggest small hotel, on the site of an old mill on the river, opening in 1928.
The Fabyan windmill, a working Dutch smock mill on the Fox River2.9 mi
A Dutch pattern smock mill built in the 1850s, five storeys of wood standing 68 feet to the cap, on ground that was once Colonel George Fabyan's Riverbank estate and is now Kane County forest preserve.
Riverbank, the private estate where American codebreaking started3.0 mi
George Fabyan made a fortune in textiles and spent much of it running a private research estate on the Fox River, with Frank Lloyd Wright remodelling the family house in 1907.
The Campana factory, where Italian Balm was made3.4 mi
The Campana Company put up this plant in 1936 to make Italian Balm, which was the best selling hand lotion in the country through the Depression, sold hard on national radio.