If you live out here, you already know the intersection. Shoup Road meets Black Forest Road at the log-cabin community center, the market tents go up Saturday mornings across the street, and most weekends that one corner sets the tempo for everything else you do until Sunday night. This week the corner is doing double duty. The Backyard Market runs its regular Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and five days after that the 57th Black Forest Festival takes over the same block.
That density of activity in one 800-foot stretch of Shoup Road is the thing worth planning around. Here is how to get the most out of it without spending your Saturday in a parking loop.
The Saturday market has quietly changed how it handles cars
The Backyard Market at 6845 Shoup Rd is in its seventh season and now runs every Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. through October 17. It is a producer-only market, which means every vendor at the tent has grown, baked, raised, or made what they are selling. That is the reason locals will drive past three closer grocery options to get here.
The new thing this year, and the reason regulars have started shifting their arrival window earlier, is that the market has added paid parking this season for overflow, $5 and cash only, with signs posted in the lot south of the market site down Black Forest Road and a shuttle running to and from the site. The free spillover in the church lots across Shoup is still there, but it fills fast in August when tomatoes, corn, and peaches all hit at once. Getting there before 9:30 is the difference between walking in and shuttling in.
Vendors worth knowing by name if you are new to the market:
- Fluffy Butt Farm and Fox Meadow Farm for produce and eggs
- The Sourdough Boulangerie for bread you will regret not buying two loaves of
- Campfire Coffee for the cup that keeps you standing in line for everything else
- Ellen's Flowers and Eternal Fuse Jewels on the artisan side
Those names come from Springs Magazine's June 2026 roundup, and the roster rotates enough week to week that a walk-through beats a shopping list. If you have a kid between 7 and 17, the market's Young Entrepreneur Program lets them run a booth for a $25 fee during the summer season, and applications open in February each year.
Two miles east, the trail nobody outside the Forest talks about
When the market winds down at 1 p.m., the natural pivot is Section 16. The trailhead sits at 8510 Burgess Road, roughly a five-minute drive from the market corner. Take Black Forest Road north to Vollmer, then Vollmer to Burgess, and the parking lot is on your right.
Here is what the alltrails crowd tends to miss. The name Section 16 is not decorative. As the Gazette laid out in its trail feature, the term dates back to a Thomas Jefferson-era federal land ordinance that portioned out parcels for schools, land that would later be leased for the financial benefit of schools, which is why the Colorado State Land Board leases these Section 16 parcels to entities like El Paso County. The trail you are hiking exists because of a 200-year-old accounting arrangement, not because someone drew a park boundary on a map.
The loop itself is a 90-acre property featuring a 4-mile loop trail through towering ponderosa pine and open meadows, with a wide, mostly level path. It is open dawn to dusk, non-motorized, and dog-friendly on leash. The parking lot fills with a rotating cast of walkers, runners, cyclists, and equestrian trailers, and even on a busy Saturday, most reviewers report finding a spot.
If four miles is more than you want after the market, the Pineries Open Space loop nearby offers a longer 8.2-mile option with Pikes Peak views, and Fox Run Regional Park's 3.2-mile loop is the shortest of the three. All three sit inside a 10-minute radius of the market corner.
This coming Friday and Saturday, the corner turns into a festival
The reason to pay attention to the week ahead specifically is the Black Forest Festival, and it does not stand alone. It comes with a Friday-night pregame.
Fri, Aug 7, 5–9 p.m. — 8th Annual Black Forest Biergarten Fundraiser at the Black Forest Community Center, with WireWood Station on stage starting at 6 p.m.
Sat, Aug 8, 6:30 a.m.–3 p.m. — Black Forest Festival 2026, "Stars, Stripes & Tall Pines," at the Black Forest Community Center, 12530 Black Forest Rd.
The festival has been a tradition for 57 years, is attended by thousands, and offers live music, community artisan shopping, food from local vendors, demonstrations on rural traditions like wool-spinning, a petting zoo, pony rides, and the popular Black Forest Festival Parade. This year also brings back the Outhouse Races and the annual Pancake Picnic Breakfast outdoors on Saturday morning.
Two logistical notes that separate people who have done this before from people doing it for the first time. First, the festival is service animal only, because the organizers do not carry insurance to allow other dogs. Leave the golden at home. Second, the Pancake Breakfast is why the 6:30 a.m. start time matters. If you show up at 10 for the parade, you have missed the quietest and best hour of the day.
The event is run by the Black Forest Community Club, which was chartered in 1929 and occupies a community-built log building at the corner of Black Forest and Shoup Roads that turns 100 in 2027. The building itself is worth a minute of your attention. Very few structures in El Paso County can claim continuous community use since before the Great Depression.
Where to land Saturday night
If you want to make the day a proper one, the reservation to book is Black Forest Bistro at 6750 Shoup Rd, three doors down from where the festival tents will still be coming down. The bistro is only open Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings, so Festival Saturday is one of the few nights it will be running.
The story behind the kitchen is a good one. Owner Deanna Johnson grew up in the restaurant business, with a father who owned French bistros in Sacramento, and made her name in Colorado Springs with the award-winning Black Forest Chew-Chew Gastrotruck, which won the Food Network's "Food Truck Fan Fight" in 2018 before she bought the log cabin on Shoup and started the renovation. The bistro sits in a historic building, and reservations at bfbistro.com are the right move any weekend, doubly so on Festival Saturday.
If the bistro is booked, Mountain View Cafe and Catering handles the daytime side of the equation and runs 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. every day of the week.
After Labor Day, the calendar keeps going
The mistake most residents make with the Black Forest season is treating the Festival as the last hurrah. It is not. The next date to circle is the Fine Arts Guild of the Rockies 50th Fine Arts and Crafts Festival on September 19 and 20, 2026. Fifty years is a serious anniversary for a regional arts show, and the Guild curates it more tightly than the summer market.
Between now and then, the Backyard Market keeps its Saturday cadence straight through October 17, and Section 16 arguably peaks in late September when the gambel oak turns and the mornings get cold enough to keep the horseflies off.
If you are new to the neighborhood and this is your first full August out here, the shorthand is this. The Forest does not have a downtown, but it has a corner. Everything worth doing on a summer Saturday happens within a quarter mile of where Shoup meets Black Forest Road, and everything else on the calendar is measured against how far from that corner it sits.
Whether you are a longtime resident enjoying the season or thinking about what a move to Black Forest might look like, Nicole Strom knows this community from the market on Saturday to the trailhead at Burgess and can help you find the acreage that fits the rhythm you want. Start Your Move — Request Your Free Relocation Guide.
