On Sunday, October 11, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., the Dighton Lions Club Arts Festival sets up on the Town Hall grounds at 979 Somerset Avenue. The festival held its first two years there, in 2005 and 2006. For many years after that it ran at the greenhouses of Araujo Farms. This year it moves back to the civic campus on Route 138. That change matters beyond a new address. Look at the rest of Dighton's fall calendar and the same pattern shows up. Most of what's going on this October is at public buildings, a farm stand, a state park museum and a coffee trailer.
Back on the lawn where it started
The festival's own site calls 2026 "Returning to Our Roots."
"After many successful years at the greenhouses of Araujo Farms, the festival is moving back to its roots on the Dighton Town Hall Grounds in 2026 where arts, crafts, music, food, and activities provided the foundation for this fun-filled community event in its first two years."
The Lions describe the festival's purpose as giving local and regional artists and crafters a family-oriented place to show and sell their work. Their homepage promises more than 50 vendors, live music, activities and food trucks. At Araujo Farms the festival had a private farm's greenhouses and open land. At Town Hall it shares a block with the post office, the Council on Aging, Veterans Memorial Park and the Old Town Hall. That has a direct effect on how you get there.
Parking, with Route 138 off-limits
The Lions posted a parking plan with one firm rule: no parking on either side of Route 138/Somerset Avenue. Visitor parking is spread across the nearby public lots:
- Dighton Community Garden
- Dighton Town Hall, north side only
- Dighton post office
- Dighton Elementary/Middle Schools
Several lots on the campus are not open to festival visitors:
| Lot | Held for |
|---|---|
| Veterans Memorial Park semicircular driveway | Performers |
| Council on Aging parking lot | Vendors |
| Old Town Hall parking lot | Impact Family Church Sunday morning services |
The last row is easy to miss. The festival falls on a Sunday morning, and church services are still going on at the Old Town Hall lot. Parking attendants will be directing traffic, and the Lions ask visitors to follow their directions.
Who is setting up
The 2026 vendor roster lists 54 entries. Most are handmade crafts, and a few are something else. Hidden Hollow Alpacas, JoAnne's Wreaths, Memere's Attic and Kristi's Kraftails are on the list. So are Nostalgia Quilter, Steve's Woodworking, Pixel Prints 3D and Soy Boy's Candles. New Bedford Soap Co. is coming too, and its event listing confirms the move from Araujo Farms to Town Hall.
One vendor shows up again later in this post. Under the Sun Farm, the North Dighton farm stand on Williams Street, has a spot on the roster.
The food page lists Tom & Jimmy's ice cream, Del's Lemonade, The Burrito Bowl, KONA Ice, County Fare Coney Island hot dogs, Dukes chicken and waffles, and Roadside fried dough. The Lions have not posted the music lineup, a rain plan or admission details in a form we could confirm. The festival site is the place to check before Sunday.
The same afternoon, a few miles down the river
At 1 p.m. on the same Sunday, the Friends of Dighton Rock Museum is hosting a local history talk. Eden Waterfield Jones, Elwell Perry and Michael Lucas of the Berkley History Museum will talk about Berkley's history and bring material from that museum's behind-the-scenes collection. The talk runs until 2 p.m. and is aimed at ages 8 and up.
The museum carries Dighton's name, but it sits inside Dighton Rock State Park in Berkley, as the Taunton Daily Gazette noted in July. The Friends list the address as 3rd Avenue, Berkley. If you leave the festival around midday, you can make it to the talk. Earlier in 2026, the Friends' series also included a Taunton River water-quality program and two Capron Park Zoomobile visits. Like the arts festival, the series is a public program in a public building.
The rest of October runs through 207 Main Street
After the festival, most of the month's scheduled events are at the Dighton Public Library. Its calendar runs two weekly series. On Wednesdays, October 14, 21 and 28, there are back-to-back Halloween movie nights at 6 and 6:30 p.m. They're free, no registration is needed, and each child gets tickets for a drink and snacks. On Thursdays at 1 p.m., there's Story Time in the Program Room. The one-off events for the rest of October are these:
| Date | Time | Program |
|---|---|---|
| Thursday, October 22 | 6 p.m. | Intro to Canning, free, registration by phone requested |
| Thursday, October 29 | 1 p.m. | Preschool Halloween party with costumes, games and trick-or-treating around the library |
| Saturday, October 31 | 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. | Halloween trick-or-treating at the library |
The canning class fits the season. It comes right as the harvest at the town's farm stands is winding down.
Where the food comes from after the trucks leave
When the food trucks pack up Sunday afternoon, most of Dighton's fall food is sold at farm stands and from a coffee trailer.
Under the Sun Farm, 325 Williams Street, North Dighton. The farm's website describes a farmstand with seasonal produce, plants, local honey, dairy, meat, eggs and groceries, and posts hours of 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily. Its 2026 CSA enrollment is closed. The farm describes its CSA season as running "late May through early October," so this month the stand, not CSA pickup, is how to buy from them.
Araujo Farms & Greenhouses, 1522 Williams Street. The festival's longtime host is still the town's best-known pumpkin farm. In 2023 the Taunton Daily Gazette reported that it grew 48 acres of pumpkins and sold pumpkins, squash, cornstalks and Nordic wreaths after the harvest. We could not confirm the farm's 2026 crop, fall events or hours directly with the farm, so call before you plan a visit around them.
The Book n' Brew, wherever it parks. This Dighton father-and-daughter business is a coffee trailer that also sells used books. It's in its second season, which the Herald News reported in May runs from May through November. Fall drinks include apple cider and pumpkin-flavored coffee. The owners told the paper they hope to open a permanent location someday. For now the trailer goes to events around the region, and its schedule is posted on Facebook.
Dighton's restaurant options have changed recently. The 1712 Restaurant & Tavern on County Street closed in late April 2025 after opening in 2019, as NBC 10 reported that month. In January 2026 the Taunton Daily Gazette reported that Alice's Last Stop, also on County Street, was for sale. It serves breakfast, lunch and weekend dinner specials. Dighton House of Pizza at 420 Somerset Avenue and C & N Pizza at 1965 County Street both post regular hours and menus online. With fewer places to sit down to eat, events like the arts festival and the library programs carry more of the town's fall.
What the roads are doing around all of it
Two infrastructure projects may affect how you get around town this fall.
MassDOT is replacing the Pleasant Street bridge over Muddy Cove Brook. The work covers the bridge, the approach roadway, sidewalks, pavement and utility relocation. The project page lists construction for "Autumn 2026" and shows the job was advertised for bids on August 22, 2026. MassDOT's tracker puts the estimated total contract cost at $5,804,064.65. On September 24, 2026, the state announced $2.17 million in redistributed federal transportation money for the project. We have not seen a detour plan or a closure date published yet.
Main Street is in a longer project. The town describes it as a roughly two-mile corridor improvement that starts underground. Water main replacement began in 2023, and storm drain work began in 2024. The drainage work, done by the town's own DPW crews, adds about 3,100 feet of new pipe between Williams Street and Elm Street. Resurfacing and new sidewalks along the corridor come last, after the remaining utilities are updated. A $750,000 federal request for the reconstruction and sidewalk phase is listed as a request, not an award. On August 31 the town set up a project inbox, [email protected], for questions about closures and updates.
When the sidewalks are finished, it will be easier to walk around the Main Street side of town, where the library at 207 Main Street sits.
If the festival or the work on Main Street has you thinking about how Dighton is changing, and what that might mean for your own place on Somerset Avenue, Williams Street or anywhere in between, I'm always glad to talk it through with no pressure and no agenda. Michelle Nadeau Property Group has followed this corner of Bristol County for more than 25 years. Let's Connect, and maybe I'll see you on the Town Hall lawn Sunday morning.
