Three weekends this fall, three entirely different versions of what community means in Upper Saddle River. A borough that spent years building a lighted turf sports complex will finally put it to real civic use. A charity festival will fill Lions Park with a beer garden and a hayride. And a farmhouse older than the country itself will host a bluegrass band and a fortune teller for five dollars a head. None of these three gatherings look, sound, or feel anything like the others, and that variety, not any single event, is the actual story of how this town spends October.

Here's the lineup, in order:

• September 26, Noon to 5pm: Upper Saddle River Day at the new 1 Lake St Sports Complex
• October 9, Noon to 6pm: USR's Oktoberfest for USR Cares at Lions Park
• Later in October: The Historical Society's Harvest Festival at the Hopper-Goetschius House Museum

Anyone who has lived here through a few autumns knows the borough calendar fills up this time of year. What's less obvious, unless you're paying close attention, is how differently these three events are built and who they're actually for.

The New Field Gets Its First Real Test

Upper Saddle River Day lands on September 26, and this year it means something specific: it's one of the first borough-wide events to happen on the ground at 1 Lake St since the sports complex there went in. The borough's own site has been soliciting advertisers for a while now, offering company names on the new scoreboard for a ten-year commitment in the $2,000 to $6,000 per year range. That notice is still live on the borough's homepage this month, which tells you something useful: the complex is functional enough to host a full afternoon of programming, but it isn't finished. Scoreboards, a field house, and a press box are still being installed.

If you're heading over for the first time, one detail is worth knowing before you drive there. Despite the 1 Lake St address, the actual entrance to the complex's large field runs through Crescent Avenue, according to the youth baseball scheduling pages that track games there. It's a small thing, but it's exactly the kind of detail that only surfaces once you've actually tried to find the place.

Upper Saddle River Day itself runs from noon to five, which puts it squarely in the category of a civic showcase rather than a tournament weekend. This is the borough introducing its residents to a piece of infrastructure that's been years in the making, not handing the field over to a league schedule. If you want to see what your tax dollars built before the crowds of Friday night football and spring lacrosse take it over for good, this is the weekend to do it.

A Different Kind of Saturday, Two Weeks Later

Thirteen days after Upper Saddle River Day, the tone shifts entirely. USR's Oktoberfest for USR Cares takes over Lions Park on October 9, running from noon to six, and it reads like a different kind of town altogether. There's a German biergarten and international food vendors. There's a silent auction and a full slate of games. There's live music, a hayride, a bounce house, and a family fun tent alongside a dedicated senior tent offering lunch and its own activities. The borough and USR Cares put this on together, and every dollar raised goes toward the nonprofit's work supporting neighbors who need help.

This is not a soft-opening event for new infrastructure. It's a produced festival, built specifically to raise money and bring people out, with a program broad enough to hold a toddler's attention and a grandparent's at the same time. Where Upper Saddle River Day is about civic pride in a new asset, Oktoberfest is about the borough's older habit of taking care of its own. The two events happen two weeks apart and could not be more different in what they're asking of the people who show up.

The Version That Predates the Borough Itself

Later in October, the calendar turns again, this time toward something considerably older. The Historical Society's Harvest Festival happens on the grounds of the Hopper-Goetschius House Museum, a Dutch sandstone farmhouse built in 1739 that stands as the oldest remaining home in Upper Saddle River. The Historical Society has run this event annually for decades, and the program has stayed remarkably consistent: old-fashioned cider pressing, a working blacksmith, a fortune teller, open-hearth cooking, craft demonstrations, museum tours, and lessons in the one-room schoolhouse that sits on the property. A bluegrass band called Growing Old Disgracefully provides the music. Admission is five dollars for adults, free for children, students under 12, and Historical Society members.

There's no beer garden here, no hayride sponsor, no scoreboard. This is an all-volunteer event, run by a Historical Society that has managed the property since 1985, when Clint and Grace Carlough donated the house to the borough after it had been in the Carlough and Goetschius families for nearly a century and a half. The festival is small by design. It's built around demonstrations you'd have found on this same land two and a half centuries ago, not around drawing the biggest possible crowd.

Why the Order Actually Matters

Line these three weekends up and a pattern emerges that a single roundup post wouldn't catch. Upper Saddle River Day is about the newest thing the borough has built. Oktoberfest is about the borough's ongoing commitment to the people who live here and sometimes need help. The Harvest Festival is about the piece of land that was here before any of the rest of it existed. None of these three registers cancels out the others, and none of them alone explains what fall actually feels like in this town.

That matters if you're the kind of resident who tends to pick one event and skip the rest. The scoreboard sponsorship notice tells you the sports complex is still becoming what it's going to be, which makes September 26 a genuinely early look rather than a repeat of something you've seen before. The Oktoberfest program, with its senior tent and its silent auction, tells you this is a fundraiser first and a party second, which changes what you should expect to spend and who you'll likely run into. And the Harvest Festival's consistency, the same cider press and the same one-room schoolhouse lesson year after year, tells you this is the one event on the list that isn't trying to be anything new at all.

If you've lived here long enough to have a favorite among the three, it's worth asking why. The answer probably says more about what you value in this town than any single weekend could on its own. For more of the borough's recurring traditions, including the museum's Summer Sundays and its December Holiday Open House, the fuller rundown lives on Sheryl Epstein-Romano's blog.

Sheryl Epstein-Romano has spent more than three decades working and living in this corner of Bergen County, including eleven years on the Upper Saddle River Zoning Board of Adjustment, and she keeps close track of the local calendar the same way she tracks the market. If a fall walk through Lions Park or an afternoon at the Hopper-Goetschius House ever turns into a conversation about your own next move in Upper Saddle River, Sheryl Epstein-Romano is glad to talk it through. Request a confidential consultation whenever the timing is right.