Staheli Family Farm Fall Festival

Where Fall Starts in Washington County

For much of Washington County, fall effectively begins when Staheli Family Farm opens its fall season. The farm sits on Washington Fields, about fifteen minutes east of downtown St. George, and pulls visitors from across Utah, Nevada, and Arizona — the corn maze alone draws on the order of 30,000 people in October.

What is on offer is broad by design: a large corn maze, the pumpkin patch, hayrides, jumping pillows, pedal carts, a cow train, animal pens, slides, and lawn games. The range is the point. Toddlers and grandparents can spend the same afternoon there without either group running out of things to do, which is why it functions as an extended-family outing rather than a children's one.

A Working Farm, Seven Generations Deep

This is not an attraction built to look like a farm. Frank Staheli Sr., a Swiss immigrant and vegetable farmer, established the place at the end of the 1880s, and the family has worked it since — seven generations on the same ground. Frank is credited with building the first rock irrigation ditches in Utah, which in a valley that farms only because somebody moved water to it is not a small footnote.

The land went through sugar beets and turkeys, then cattle and alfalfa when Frank's son Woodrow took it on in the 1960s. The silo built in that period still stands and now serves as the farm store. The corn maze is a much later idea: Burke Staheli cut the farm's first one in 2001, a design called "Go For the Gold." Everything the public now associates with the place grew out of that single season.

That history is worth knowing before you go, because it explains the texture of the visit. The animal pens hold working animals, the equipment is equipment, and the Swiss heritage that runs through Santa Clara a few miles west is the same settlement story.

Two Events, One Address

The most common mistake visitors make here is buying into the wrong thing. The daytime fall festival and the after-dark Field of Screams are separate events with separate admission at the same address, and they are aimed at opposite ends of the age range. If you are bringing small children, you want the daytime festival and you want to be gone before the farm turns over for the evening.

Planning a Visit

The farm publishes its operating days each season and does not open every day of the week, so check before driving out — this is the single most common reason people arrive to a closed gate. Weekends in October are the busiest stretch of the year; a weekday afternoon earlier in the season is a far calmer visit with the same maze.

Dress for a working farm: closed shoes, and clothes that can meet dirt. Afternoons in September are still genuinely hot in this valley, so the later end of the day is more comfortable than the middle of it.

Who It Suits

Families with children of mixed ages, and anyone who wants the fall ritual — maze, pumpkins, hayride — without leaving the county. It sits alongside the rest of what there is to do with kids in St. George, and for visitors it pairs naturally with a stop in Washington and the Fields area on the way back into town.