Every fall for twenty-six years, a chunk of Shreveport's calendar revolved around a corn maze off Sentell Road. You picked a Saturday, loaded the kids into the car, and drove out to DixieMaze Farms for a pumpkin off the vine and a walk through rows of corn cut into a puzzle. That habit is gone now. The farm closed for good after its final Fall Fest wrapped last November, and this is the first autumn since 1999 that spot won't be part of anyone's plans.
At the same time, the other anchor of Shreveport's fall calendar isn't just returning. It's expanding. The Red River Revel turns 50 this year, and instead of shrinking to fit the space DixieMaze left behind, it's doing the opposite: two full festival weekends instead of one, a lineup built almost entirely around musicians with roots in this city, and a tie to another local institution's own half-century mark. If you've mentally filed "fall in Shreveport" under the same few bullet points for years, this is the season that rewrites the list.
Twenty-Six Years, Then a Sunset
DixieMaze Farms opened in 1999 at 9596 Sentell Road in north Caddo Parish and grew from a simple pumpkin patch into a full agritainment stop, complete with a haunted maze, hayrides, a cow train, and a corn cannon. Owners Mike and LeiLani Billings announced last year that they were retiring, and the farm's last Fall Fest ran from September 27 through November 1, 2025. Their daughter, Kayla Adams, described the pumpkin patch as the heart of the place, the part where families trudged through a real field to pick their own pumpkin off the vine rather than off a pallet.
The Billings family hasn't said what comes next for the property. What's certain is that this fall, for the first time in a generation, there's no version of "we're doing DixieMaze this weekend" on the table. If your family calendar has a Billings-shaped hole in it this October, you're not imagining it.
The Festival That Didn't Shrink to Fill the Gap
Most years, the Red River Revel runs a single long weekend at Festival Plaza downtown. This year, marking its 50th anniversary, it's running two: October 8 through 11, then again October 15 through 18. That's not a minor scheduling tweak. It's a doubling of the festival's usual footprint, and organizers built the lineup to match the occasion.
Opening night on October 8 kicks off with a fireworks and drone show, timed deliberately to celebrate both the Revel's 50th year and the 50th anniversary of the Independence Bowl. From there, the music leans hard into acts with Shreveport ties. Better Than Ezra, the LSU-formed alt-rock band, headlines. Cowboy Mouth brings its New Orleans rock-and-jam energy. Squonk returns with a new outdoor production called "Joy Machine" after last year's show drew a strong response. The American Tragedy, a Shreveport rock act, is reuniting for its first show in five years, backed by an original orchestral composition performed with the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra. Saturday night's Highland Collective stacks a run of local songwriters including Dylan LeBlanc, Seratones, Maggie Koerner, The Lackadaisies, and The Peekers into a single 3.5-hour set.
Executive Director Logan Lewis explained the thinking behind leaning so heavily on hometown talent for the anniversary:
"It just felt right to make the 50th Revel be more about 'us' than anything else."
He's pointed to the festival's roots in local volunteers, vendors, and community organizers as the reason this year's music lineup reads like a hometown reunion rather than a touring-act showcase. That's a different booking philosophy than past years, when the Revel leaned more on national touring names.
A Second Anniversary Hiding Inside the First
The Revel's 50th isn't happening in isolation. It's turning 50 the same year as both the Independence Bowl and the Shreveport Regional Arts Council, and the three organizations are marking it together. A multi-month exhibit called Reflections opened August 21 at Artspace downtown and runs through October 25, tracing five decades of history across all three groups and the local leaders and volunteers who built them.
That overlap explains why this year's Revel programming feels bigger than a typical anniversary bump. It's not one organization throwing itself a party. It's three civic institutions that all trace back to the same mid-1970s moment in Shreveport, using the same fall season to tell one shared story. If you've ever wondered how a football bowl game, an arts festival, and an arts council ended up so tightly linked in this city, this year's programming is basically the answer laid out in exhibit form.
Highland's Own Weekend, Three Weeks Earlier
Before any of that, Shreveport's Historic Highland neighborhood gets its turn. The Highland Jazz & Blues Festival returns for its 22nd year on Saturday, September 19, at Columbia Park, and it's still free to attend. This year's headliner is Dumpstaphunk, the New Orleans funk group with roots in the Neville family and The Meters, closing out the Pavilion Stage. More than 70 food and artisan vendors are expected, along with a children's art area and a pet park.
There's a quieter note in this year's lineup too. Longtime performer Buddy Flett, a Grammy-nominated Shreveport musician who played all but one of the festival's 21 previous years, died before this year's festival. Festival organizers are honoring him with a tribute set in his usual opening slot. Executive Director Emerie Eck Holtzclaw put it plainly: "Buddy was a dear friend and he never missed a chance to play our festival." For anyone who's caught his sets at Columbia Park over the years, that slot is going to feel different this time.
Getting the Logistics Straight
If you're mapping out which weekends to keep open, here's how the season actually lines up:
- September 19 — Highland Jazz & Blues Festival, Columbia Park, free admission, three stages, free shuttle service running all day
- October 8-11 — Red River Revel, Weekend One, Festival Plaza, opens with a fireworks and drone show
- October 15-18 — Red River Revel, Weekend Two, Festival Plaza, continuing the 50th anniversary programming
- Through October 25 — Reflections exhibit at Artspace, open to the public
A Red River Revel weekend pass runs $25 for four admissions, and a Reveler pass runs $50 for eight, good any day or time across either weekend. Highland Jazz & Blues stays free, which has been part of its identity since it started.
What This Actually Changes
None of this is a minor refresh of the usual fall roundup. A 26-year family business that shaped a specific kind of Saturday for Shreveport households closed its gates for the last time last November, and there's no announced replacement for that particular experience. In its place, the city's signature fall festival isn't quietly filling the gap. It's doubling its own footprint, tying itself to two other institutions' 50th anniversaries, and building a lineup that treats local musicians as the headline rather than the opener. Highland's own festival, three weeks earlier, adds a genuinely free weekend to the calendar and a tribute that longtime attendees will notice.
If you've lived here long enough to have a fall routine, this is the year that routine gets rewritten. Worth building your October around it now, before the good parking spots at Festival Plaza fill up twice instead of once.
Shreveport's calendar keeps shifting in ways that are easy to miss if you're not paying attention to what opens, what closes, and what quietly doubles in size. That's true of festivals, and it's just as true of the neighborhoods around them. Murcia & Co. keeps close tabs on both, because knowing a market means knowing what's actually happening in it, not just what the calendar looked like five years ago. If you're thinking about what's next for your own address in Shreveport or Bossier City, Let's Connect.
