Each autumn, when the mountains around Andrews begin to trade summer green for the colors of fall, Main Street takes on a different character. Vendors fill the downtown blocks, live music carries between storefronts, bratwurst and pretzels appear beside more familiar mountain festival foods, and beer and wine from local producers become part of a celebration that now draws visitors from well beyond Cherokee County.
Andrews Oktoberfest feels established enough today that it would be easy to assume the celebration reaches far back into the town’s past. It does not. The surviving evidence points instead to a much more recent beginning, one closely connected to the growth of local breweries, wineries, downtown businesses, and the Andrews Chamber of Commerce.
A contemporary article published in September 2016 was unusually clear about what was happening. Andrews was preparing to hold its first Oktoberfest on October 8 of that year. What began as a six-hour gathering at Hall Park would, in less than a decade, develop into a large Main Street festival attracting thousands of people and nearly one hundred vendors.
The story of Andrews Oktoberfest is therefore not simply the story of a fall festival. It is a glimpse into how a small Appalachian town has used local food, craft beverages, music, small businesses, and public gathering spaces to bring people back into the center of town.
The First Andrews Oktoberfest in 2016
The inaugural Andrews Oktoberfest was scheduled for Saturday, October 8, 2016, from 2 until 8 p.m. at Hall Park on First Street. Unlike the sprawling downtown celebration that would come later, the first event was centered in the park and had a fairly straightforward formula: local beer and wine, food, live music, crafts, and a fall afternoon in the mountains.
Three Andrews businesses stood behind the celebration: Andrews Brewing Company, Calaboose Cellars, and Hoppy Trout Brewing Company. Together, they represented a growing craft beverage culture that had been developing quietly in and around Andrews during the preceding years.
Calaboose Cellars had already been operating for years. Eric and Judy Carlson established their winery in Andrews in 2007 and later entered the craft beer business, launching Andrews Brewing Company in 2013. Their businesses were part of a larger movement in western North Carolina that connected small breweries and wineries with tourism, local agriculture, and downtown revitalization.
Hoppy Trout represented the newest piece of that scene. The brewery traces its commercial brewing history in Andrews to 2016, the same year as the first Oktoberfest. Its origins grew from home brewing and experimentation by brewmaster Tommy Rodeck before developing into a downtown business.
That makes the timing of the first Oktoberfest particularly significant. Andrews was not reviving a forgotten community celebration from an earlier generation. Instead, local beverage businesses created something suited to the Andrews of the 2010s. The festival borrowed the name and atmosphere of the German Oktoberfest tradition, but its foundation was distinctly local.
The original announcement promoted food, beer and wine on tap, live music, and tables occupied by local craftspeople. Organizers clearly hoped the event would become something visitors returned to. The writer promoting the celebration in 2016 even suggested that visitors might enjoy themselves enough to add Andrews Oktoberfest to their calendars for the following year.
That prediction proved remarkably accurate.
Hall Park and the Early Festival
The surviving record for every one of the festival’s earliest years is incomplete. Contemporary material for 2017 remains difficult to locate, and it would be risky to reconstruct a detailed year by year history from assumptions alone. One of the most promising sources for filling that gap is The Andrews Journal, which was still publishing during the festival’s early period. Newspaper database holdings preserve issues from 2008 through 2018, covering the first several years of Oktoberfest.
By 2018, however, there is firm evidence that Oktoberfest had survived its experimental beginning.
Our State magazine included Andrews in its statewide Oktoberfest roundup that year. The festival was scheduled for September 29 from 2 until 8 p.m. at Harold H. Hall Memorial Park. Andrews Brewing Company, Hoppy Trout Brewing, and Calaboose Cellars were still involved, but another local producer, FernCrest Winery, had joined the celebration.
FernCrest itself reflected the strength of the small area’s wine industry. Kurt and Jan Olson began making wine at home before purchasing grapes in 2007, planted grapes in the Snowbird Mountains in 2010, and began producing wine from their own vineyard in 2013. FernCrest later established a tasting room on Main Street in Andrews.
The 2018 event therefore retained much of the character of the original. It was still a six-hour festival centered at Hall Park, and locally produced beer and wine remained among its defining attractions. Yet its appearance in a statewide publication also suggests something had changed. Oktoberfest was beginning to become part of the public identity Andrews presented to visitors.
From Hall Park Toward Main Street
Precisely when every portion of Oktoberfest expanded from Hall Park into the surrounding downtown blocks deserves further archival research. What the evidence does show is that by 2021, Main Street had become an important part of the celebration.
An Andrews Chamber of Commerce advertisement printed in the Cherokee Scout‘s 2021 Cherokee County business directory announced Oktoberfest for October 9 from 11 a.m. until 7 p.m. The language had also changed. Instead of introducing a new experiment, the Chamber called the celebration its annual Oktoberfest Jubilee and invited beer, wine, food, and craft enthusiasts, along with younger visitors, to Main Street in Andrews.
The longer hours are important. The 2016 and 2018 festivals had run from 2 until 8 p.m. The 2021 celebration began at 11 in the morning and continued for eight hours. Oktoberfest was becoming a full-day downtown event rather than primarily an afternoon beer and wine gathering.
Evidence from Andrews United Methodist Church shows how deeply the festival had entered community life by then. The church’s October 2021 newsletter listed the Town of Andrews Oktoberfest for October 9 from 11 a.m. until 7 p.m. Members of the United Methodist Women planned a benefit bake sale to raise money for a local child with medical expenses, while a children’s table offered crafts and games to families attending the festival.
That participation tells us something a festival advertisement cannot. Oktoberfest was no longer simply an event created by a few businesses selling local beverages. Churches, families, youth activities, craftspeople, nonprofit efforts, and merchants were becoming part of the day.
The beer remained, but the festival was becoming a community gathering.
Oktoberfest Becomes One of Andrews’ Major Events
By the early 2020s, the Chamber had developed a broader calendar of downtown festivals and recurring events. Spring Fling, Food Truck Fridays, Christmas on Main, and Oktoberfest helped create reasons for residents and visitors to gather downtown throughout the year.
The growth can be measured most clearly in the Chamber’s own records.
For 2023, the Andrews Chamber of Commerce reported an estimated 4,500 attendees at Oktoberfest and 99 participating vendors. For comparison, Spring Fling that year drew an estimated 5,000 people, while Christmas on Main attracted approximately 7,000. Oktoberfest had become one of the Chamber’s major annual draws.
Those 4,500 visitors were arriving in a town whose population was smaller than the festival crowd itself. More importantly for downtown businesses, the event concentrated those visitors into the commercial heart of Andrews.
The Chamber’s report also noted that people attending Andrews events came from across the Southeast, including North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Florida, and Alabama. The same document recorded substantial advertising through Facebook, newspapers, radio, and Our State magazine.
The transformation from 2016 becomes striking when the two periods are placed side by side. The first Oktoberfest was a six-hour Hall Park gathering sponsored by three local beverage businesses. Seven years later, thousands of people and almost one hundred vendors were participating in a downtown event promoted across several states.
More Than Beer and Wine
As the festival grew, so did its purpose.
Beer and wine remained central to the Oktoberfest identity, but the modern celebration increasingly incorporated arts and crafts vendors, food trucks, German-inspired food, multiple music areas, children’s activities, games, competitions, and downtown shopping.
This broader approach also placed Oktoberfest within a larger effort to develop tourism around Andrews and the surrounding mountains. Projects such as Andrews Valley Rail Tours, which began operating in 2022, similarly sought to turn local history and landscape into experiences that could draw people into the community. The rail tour operates from the historic Andrews Depot and carries visitors along the old railroad corridor toward the Valley River Tunnel.
By 2025, even a Young Entrepreneurs Market for children and teenagers was being incorporated into Oktoberfest weekend. Young vendors were scheduled to set up along Locust Street during the festival, giving local children an opportunity to sell their own products as part of the larger downtown marketplace.
The result was a festival increasingly difficult to describe simply as a beer celebration. Oktoberfest had become an umbrella under which many parts of Andrews could participate.
The Missing Years in the Record
For a festival this recent, its documentary history is surprisingly uneven.
The strongest surviving public evidence clearly establishes the inaugural 2016 festival, the 2018 celebration at Hall Park, the 2021 Main Street event, the large 2023 gathering, the 2024 cancellation, and the return in 2025. The surviving record for 2017, 2019, 2020, and some other intervening years remains less certain from readily available sources. The existing research therefore does not justify claiming an uninterrupted annual festival for every year without additional documentation.
The uncertainty surrounding 2020 is particularly worth respecting. Many festivals across the country were disrupted during the COVID-19 pandemic, but without an Andrews-specific source documenting exactly what happened to Oktoberfest, assigning a reason or inventing an event history would substitute probability for evidence.
The same caution applies to determining the precise year when Oktoberfest fully transitioned from Hall Park to Main Street. The evidence tells us that Hall Park remained central in 2018 and that Main Street was clearly part of the festival by 2021. The exact steps in between await more detailed examination of The Andrews Journal, Cherokee Scout, Chamber records, photographs, and surviving social media posts.
Sometimes the most accurate history is the history that admits where the record becomes quiet.
The 2024 Cancellation
By 2024, Oktoberfest appeared firmly established enough that another celebration was already being planned for September 28. Vendors prepared to participate, tourism websites advertised the event, and the Chamber’s records show 90 vendors associated with the planned festival.
Then it was canceled.
The Andrews Chamber’s own annual report leaves no ambiguity. Oktoberfest attendance for 2024 is recorded as zero with the event marked canceled, while 90 vendors were associated with the planned celebration. The report does not provide a reason for the cancellation, so one should not be supplied without additional documentation.
The cancellation interrupted what had become one of Andrews’ most visible annual gatherings, but it did not end the tradition. In the same report, the Chamber had already placed Oktoberfest back onto the following year’s calendar for September 27, 2025.
Oktoberfest Returns in 2025
When Oktoberfest returned on September 27, 2025, the modern version looked considerably different from the small Hall Park event that had introduced the tradition nine years earlier.
The celebration ran along Main Street from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m. A beer and wine garden included FernCrest Winery, Hoppy Trout Brewing Company, and Snowbird Mountains Brewery. Two stages offered live music, while German foods such as bratwurst, potato salad, and Bavarian-style pretzels appeared alongside food trucks and other local offerings. Arts and crafts vendors lined downtown streets.
Festival games had become part of the attraction as well. Stein-holding competitions and Bavarian costume contests strengthened the Oktoberfest theme, while cornhole, giant games, children’s activities, and a family fun zone broadened the audience.
Locust Street’s Young Entrepreneurs Market added another distinctly local dimension, placing children and teenagers alongside the adults who filled downtown with booths and small businesses.
The revived festival retained the beer, wine, food, and music of 2016 while surrounding them with the activities of a much larger community fair.
Ten Years After the First Festival
Andrews Oktoberfest reached another milestone on September 26, 2026, nearly ten years after the inaugural celebration.
The 2026 festival again occupied Main Street and was scheduled from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m. Its advertised format included a beer and wine garden, German-inspired food, food trucks, local arts and crafts, family activities, Bavarian games, and downtown entertainment. The celebration continued to be presented through the Andrews Chamber of Commerce, with Harrah’s Cherokee Valley River Casino & Hotel serving as presenting sponsor.
A decade is not a long time compared with many Appalachian fairs, reunions, and community celebrations that can trace their histories through several generations. That short history is precisely what makes Andrews Oktoberfest interesting.
We can watch nearly the entire transformation within the surviving record.
In 2016, three local businesses brought beer, wine, music, food, and crafts to Hall Park for six hours.
In 2018, the festival was still centered there, but its collection of local beverage producers had expanded.
By 2021, the Chamber was describing it as an annual Oktoberfest Jubilee connected with Main Street, while churches and community organizations participated alongside merchants.
By 2023, an estimated 4,500 people and 99 vendors were involved.
After the 2024 cancellation, the festival returned to Main Street in 2025 and continued in 2026 with music, food areas, games, children’s activities, vendors, local breweries, and wineries.
What had begun as a small gathering was becoming a local institution.
Why Andrews Oktoberfest Matters
Small town festivals rarely appear in traditional histories. They do not usually produce government reports, famous speeches, or monuments. Their evidence survives instead in advertisements, newspaper pages, church newsletters, vendor forms, Chamber reports, photographs, social media posts, and the memories of people who attended them.
Yet those records can reveal how a community changes.
Andrews Oktoberfest emerged during a period when locally made wine and craft beer were becoming part of the economy of far western North Carolina. Its founders were local businesses looking for a reason to bring people together. The festival then expanded into a broader downtown event where brewery and winery booths stood beside craftspeople, restaurants, churches, young entrepreneurs, musicians, nonprofit groups, and family activities.
Its history also demonstrates how modern Appalachian communities use festivals to strengthen downtown districts. Andrews cannot compete with Asheville, Knoxville, or Atlanta by size, nor does it need to. A festival that draws several thousand people into a small downtown for a single autumn Saturday can have an outsized effect on restaurants, shops, accommodations, tourism businesses, and public awareness of the town.
Most importantly, Andrews Oktoberfest has developed a character that belongs to Andrews itself. The lederhosen, pretzels, steins, and German references provide the theme, but the festival’s real ingredients come from Cherokee County and the surrounding mountains: locally brewed beer, locally made wine, mountain musicians, regional craftspeople, Main Street businesses, children selling their first handmade products, volunteers setting up booths, and neighbors meeting neighbors downtown.
That is how traditions are often created.
They do not always arrive from a distant past already finished. Sometimes someone opens a brewery, someone else makes wine, three businesses decide to put on a festival in a park, and enough people enjoy themselves that the celebration becomes part of the community calendar.
Ten years later, an event that once needed to be introduced as Andrews’ first Oktoberfest no longer needs an explanation.
It has become part of autumn in Andrews.
Sources & Further Reading
Andrews Chamber of Commerce. The Facts and Figures About Andrews Chamber of Commerce Events, 2023. Andrews, NC: Andrews Chamber of Commerce, 2024. https://www.visitandrewsnc.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/2023_facts-figures-andrews-events.pdf
Andrews Chamber of Commerce. The Facts and Figures About Andrews Chamber of Commerce Events, 2024. Andrews, NC: Andrews Chamber of Commerce, 2025. https://www.visitandrewsnc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2024-facts-figures-andrews-events.pdf
Andrews Chamber of Commerce. “2021 Events.” In Cherokee County Business Card & Resource Directory, 2021–22. Andrews, NC, 2021. https://etypeproductionstorage1.blob.core.windows.net/%24web/Production_Prod/Jobs/240/2021-08-12/242204/PreProcessedPDF/chsc1_239011_prep_20210812072319879.pdf
Andrews United Methodist Church. October 2021 Newsletter. Andrews, NC, October 2021. https://andrewsumc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/21_Oct_Newsletter.pdf
Andrews Valley Rail Tours. “Andrews Valley Rail Tours.” Accessed October 17, 2026. https://www.andrewsvalleyrailtours.com/
Cardinal & Pine. “The 20 Best Oktoberfest Celebrations Across North Carolina.” Accessed October 17, 2026. https://cardinalpine.com/local/best-oktoberfest-celebrations-across-north-carolina/
Carolina Outfitters. “Fall Festivals & Events near Nantahala River.” Accessed October 17, 2026. https://carolinaoutfitters.com/fall-festivals-events-near-nantahala-river/
Cherokee Scout. “An Oktoberfest to Remember.” Murphy, NC. https://www.cherokeescout.com/local-newsletter/oktoberfest-remember
Cherokee Scout. “First-Time Event a Fun, Colorful Success.” Murphy, NC. https://www.cherokeescout.com/local/first-time-event-fun-colorful-success
Cherokee Scout. “SCOUTING AROUND: Weekend Full of Events for Everyone.” Murphy, NC. https://www.cherokeescout.com/local-2021-and-earlier/scouting-around-weekend-full-events-everyone
DigitalNC. “The Cherokee Scout, Murphy, N.C.” North Carolina Digital Heritage Center. Accessed October 17, 2026. https://www.digitalnc.org/newspapers/the-cherokee-scout-murphy-n-c/
FernCrest Winery. “Our Story.” Andrews, NC. Accessed October 17, 2026. https://www.ferncrestwinery.com/our-story.html
Grand View Falls. “Events Near Grand View Falls.” Accessed October 17, 2026. https://www.grandviewfallsnc.com/events-near-gvf/
Hoppy Trout Brewing Company. “Hoppy Trout Brewing Company.” Andrews, NC. Accessed October 17, 2026. https://hoppytrout.square.site/
Marketspread. “Andrews NC Young Entrepreneurs Market.” 2025. https://marketspread.com/market/31842/andrews-nc-young-entrepreneurs-market/
NC LIVE. “NC LIVE.” North Carolina Libraries. Accessed October 17, 2026. https://www.nclive.org/
Nola Cooper Designs. “My Work.” Accessed October 17, 2026. https://www.nolacooper.com/my-design-skills/my-work/
North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, State Archives of North Carolina. “North Carolina Newspaper Guide.” Raleigh, NC. Accessed October 17, 2026. https://archives.ncdcr.gov/researchers/collections/newspapers/newspaper-guide
North Carolina General Assembly, Legislative Library. “North Carolina Newspapers Available through NewsBank.” Raleigh, NC. Accessed October 17, 2026. https://www.ncleg.gov/Files/Library/newsbank/ncpapers_title_files/sheet001.htm
Our State. “Your Guide to Cherokee County, North Carolina.” Accessed October 17, 2026. https://www.ourstate.com/guide-to-cherokee-county-nc/
Poltrock Team. “Celebrate Fall with These Must-See Mountain Festivals.” I Love Murphy, September 14, 2016. https://ilovemurphy.com/october-festivals-showcase-our-mountains-at-their-best/
Schanze, Katie. “Fall 2018 Oktoberfest Roundup.” Our State, 2018. https://www.ourstate.com/fall-2018-oktoberfest-roundup/
Smoky Mountain News. “Tapping Your Dreams: Andrews Brewing Company.” Accessed October 17, 2026. https://smokymountainnews.com/archived/archived-travel-guide/tapping-your-dreams-andrews-brewing-company/
Town of Andrews. “Community Calendar.” Accessed October 17, 2026. https://www.andrewsnc.org/calendar/
Town of Andrews. “Join the Andrews Memo.” Accessed October 17, 2026. https://www.andrewsnc.org/join-the-andrews-memo/
Town of Andrews. “Town of Andrews, North Carolina.” Accessed October 17, 2026. https://www.andrewsnc.org/
Author Note: This article traces Andrews Oktoberfest from its documented beginning in 2016 through its growth into one of the town’s major fall celebrations. Some early years remain thinly documented, and additional photographs, newspaper clippings, programs, or memories from readers could help preserve a more complete history of the festival.