Most Colorado communities spread their summer thin across three months of concerts, markets, and fairs. Black Forest does the opposite. If you live off Shoup, Vollmer, Hodgen, or Burgess, you already know the pattern: the calendar sits quiet for weeks, then compresses almost the entire community year into a ten-day window in early August, almost all of it inside or within walking distance of one log building at the corner of Black Forest Road and Shoup Road.
That building is the thesis of this post. Understand it and you understand how late summer works here. Miss it and you miss the season.
The building that runs the season
The Black Forest Community Center is a volunteer-built log structure completed in 1929 and still owned by the Black Forest Community Club, which was chartered that same year and now counts 224 member families. The Club's log home at 12530 Black Forest Rd. turns 100 in 2027, which is why you'll hear more centennial talk creeping into board meetings this fall.
For a building most residents drive past without a second look, it carries an outsized share of the neighborhood's cultural calendar. The Black Rose Acoustic Society runs its Friday concerts out of the same hall, with June and July 2026 dates on the Peak Radar listings and more programmed into August. New Horizons Band of Colorado Springs used the space in early July. Line-dance classes led by Mack Sharp on Sunday afternoons donate their fees back to keep the building open. The point is that when a Black Forest resident says "I'll meet you at the Community Center," they are not being specific about which event. There is almost always one.
August 7 and 8, in that order
The heart of the compression is a Friday-into-Saturday sequence anchored to the same address.
Friday, August 7, is the 8th Annual Black Forest Biergarten Fundraiser, starting at 5 p.m. at the Community Club with WireWood Station on the bill. It's a fundraiser for the building itself, and it functions as the soft opening of Festival weekend for people who want live music and a beer without the daytime crowds.
Saturday, August 8, is the 57th Black Forest Festival, gates at 6:30 a.m. The 2026 theme is Stars, Stripes & Tall Pines. What that translates to on the ground:
- The Pancake Picnic Breakfast, outdoors, Saturday morning
- The Festival Parade, staging at the corner of Shoup & Black Forest
- The Outhouse Races, returning to the schedule this year
- The Artisan and Business Booth Fair
- Wool-spinning and other rural-tradition demonstrations
- A petting zoo, pony rides, tractor rides, children's games and crafts
One item worth flagging for anyone new to the neighborhood: the Festival is service-animal only, not dog-friendly, because the organizers don't carry insurance for pets. If you normally take the retriever everywhere, this is the one Saturday you don't.
The 57-year run and thousands-of-attendees scale explain why a lot of long-time residents treat that Saturday as an unofficial holiday. They also explain the parking. If you're walking, walk. If you're driving, arrive before the parade forms.
What's happening off Shoup Road
The Festival is the anchor, but two other events in the same stretch of weeks are worth knowing about because they draw a different crowd.
The 12th Annual Ranch Horse Roundup runs Saturday, July 25, from 7 a.m. at the Kit Carson Riding Club on the east side of the Forest. It's a competition day rather than a spectator festival, but the Kit Carson grounds are worth a visit if you've never been. For horse owners in Black Forest, it functions as one of the season's two or three unofficial meeting points.
The Cordera Summer Concerts series with WireWood Station lands Thursday, July 30, at 6 p.m. on the Grand Lawn at 11894 Grand Lawn Cir. Technically it's a Cordera neighborhood event, but it sits inside the Black Forest ZIP code and pulls listeners from across the surrounding acreage. It's the closest thing to a weekly summer concert series that this side of Colorado Springs has, and the July 30 date is your last easy midweek option before the Festival weekend swallows the calendar.
Then, looking a little further out, the Fine Arts Guild of the Rockies 50th Fine Arts and Crafts Festival on September 19 and 20 marks the far end of the season. Fifty years for a single juried show is unusual anywhere. If you're the kind of resident who prefers browsing to parading, this is the weekend to save.
A dinner reservation worth planning around
If you have friends visiting for Festival weekend and you want to eat somewhere they'll remember, the reservation to make is at Black Forest Bistro, 6750 Shoup Rd., about a mile and a half west of the Community Center. Chef Deanna Johnson, who came up through her father's French bistros in Sacramento and later won the Food Network's Food Truck Fan Fight in 2018 with her Black Forest Chew-Chew truck, bought the log cabin on Shoup and converted it into the current restaurant. The kitchen runs a rotating menu with international bistro leanings, and dinner service is Thursday through Saturday, 5 p.m. onward.
Two practical notes for locals hosting out-of-town guests. First, the dining room is small. Reservations on Festival weekend fill early. Second, the kitchen has been running a Thursday prix-fixe format alongside the standing menu, which is the quietest night to bring people who want to actually hear each other talk.
The trail question this August
The other half of a Black Forest weekend is what happens once you're back in your boots. Two properties do most of the work.
Black Forest Section 16 is the 90-acre state-land parcel off Burgess Road, with a 3.9-mile perimeter loop that the El Paso County Parks Department manages under lease from the State Land Board. Elevation range is roughly 7,405 to 7,606 feet, so the climb is real but modest. It's open to hikers, leashed dogs, mountain bikers, and equestrians on the same tread. Weekend mornings, expect the Burgess lot to fill by 7 a.m.; one recent AllTrails logbook entry from a May 2026 hiker counted more than 20 cars by just after 7.
Black Forest Regional Park is the larger property, 385 acres of El Paso County land accessed off Milam Road and Vessey Road, with three marked loops (orange, white, and yellow) plus a web of connector trails. If you have visitors who want a shorter, more shaded walk with a playground at the trailhead, this is the one. Section 16 is the one for the four-mile morning workout.
Here is the piece that makes 2026 different from a normal August. The Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control's 2026 wildfire risk assessment describes conditions across the western U.S. as an "exceptional drought," a level that occurs roughly once every 50 years. A division spokesperson told the Gazette in March that conditions are "a magnitude worse" than those preceding the Waldo Canyon and Black Forest fires, both of which sit among the four most destructive in state history. Fire Marshal Kris Cooper flagged the U.S. 250th-anniversary celebrations as a particular concern because of fireworks.
For residents, that reframes some of the small choices this month. Campfires and fire pits are the obvious ones. Less obvious: the timing of yard work involving chains, blades, or dry-grass mowing during red-flag afternoons; the placement of gravel and stone buffers around structures; the removal of ponderosa needle mats from roofs and gutters. In reporting on the 13th anniversary of the Black Forest Fire, KKTV noted the neighborhoods that were most carefully mitigated in 2013 fared markedly better than those that weren't, a point a Monument Fire Protection District firefighter with Black Forest history repeated in coverage of this spring's 24 Fire.
None of that is a reason to skip a summer weekend on Section 16. It's a reason to walk it early, to check the county's fire restriction page before you strike a match, and to look at your own eave line the same way you'd look at a trail before a thunderstorm.
The one line to keep on the fridge
If you remember one thing from this post, remember the address. 12530 Black Forest Road. Everything else, the concerts, the Biergarten, the Pancake Picnic, the parade, the Outhouse Races, the September craft festival, orbits that log building. Plan around August 7 and 8. Book Bistro reservations before the weekend fills. Hike Section 16 before 7 a.m. And keep the fire-mitigation checklist in a place you actually see.
If you're thinking beyond the season, whether that's a barn project on your acreage, a well or septic question, or a conversation about what your property is worth in a market where Black Forest homes trade on well yield, soil, and setback as much as square footage, Michael Turner and the team are the ones who live and work in this ZIP code year-round. Book an appointment when the timing is right.
