If you've lived in Harrison long enough to have opinions about it, you already know the town doesn't celebrate Columbus Day. It celebrates two of them, in two different places, on two different days, and treats them as separate occasions rather than one event with a long tail.
This year the calendar compresses everything into an eight-day stretch, so the split takes a little sorting out. Where each event lands follows a pattern that has held for years: West Harrison gets the cars and the fireworks first, downtown gets the parade two days later, and neither side borrows from the other's spotlight.
West Harrison Goes First
The week opens on Columbus Day itself, Monday, October 12, in the commercial strip that runs beside Silver Lake, not on Halstead Avenue where most of Harrison's restaurants and shops sit. This is the West Harrison Business District, and for one day it hosts the 46th annual "It's Great to Live in Harrison" Columbus Day Observance Car Show & Music, running 10am to 4pm.
That evening the same side of town keeps the momentum going. The Rock Steady Band plays at 7pm at the West Harrison Firehouse, 95 Lake Street, followed by fireworks. If you live anywhere near Silver Lake Park, this is the night to plan your parking before you need it, not after.
The next day, Tuesday, October 13, is quieter by comparison: a Harrison Police Open House at 650 North Street from 10am to 2pm, the kind of low-key civic event that fills a gap between the two bigger traditions without competing with either.
Downtown Takes Its Turn Two Days Later
Wednesday, October 14, belongs to the other Main Street. The parade always starts at the corner of Thatcher and Halstead, a downtown intersection, and always ends at Ma Riis Park, the green space that sits between Town Hall and the Harrison Library. The "It's Great to Live in Harrison" Parade & Festival kicks off at 10am, and Thatcher and Halstead will be closed that morning for the lineup before the crowd shifts to Ma Riis Park for the afternoon.
This is the piece of the week most people picture when they hear "Harrison Columbus Day," and for good reason. It's the one with the parade route, the closed downtown block, and the festival that stretches into the afternoon. But it's also only half the story, and treating it as the whole thing is how people end up surprised by a fireworks show two days earlier that they had no idea was coming.
The Order Isn't Fixed, and That's the Point
Here's the detail that actually explains why the week looks the way it does this year. The car show has run in the West Harrison Business District for decades, always paired with the same firehouse fireworks. What moves from year to year is the sequence relative to the parade, and that sequence tracks the calendar itself.
In 2018, the fireworks fell on the Saturday before Columbus Day and the car show landed the following Sunday, after the downtown parade had already happened. In 2026, the order flips: the car show and fireworks open the week on Columbus Day itself, and the downtown parade doesn't happen until two days later. The shift isn't random. It's a function of where October 12 falls on the calendar in a given year, which determines whether Columbus Day itself lands closer to the front of the week's traditions or the back.
What doesn't move is the commitment to giving each side of town its own full day rather than folding one tradition into the other's schedule. If you've noticed that Harrison sometimes feels like two towns sharing a zip code, this is one of the clearest civic expressions of that split, and it's been consistent even as the calendar around it has not.
The Newest Addition Confirms the Pattern
If the alternating order were just legacy scheduling, you'd expect the newest event to land wherever there's a gap. Instead, the 4th Annual West Harrison Italian Heritage Festival, now old enough to have its own track record, runs along Lake Street on October 20, deliberately closing out the week on the same side of town where it started. The festival runs from 11:30am to 7pm, giving West Harrison a bookend rather than a one-off.
That's a meaningful tell. A town that wanted to consolidate its Columbus Day identity into one location would have placed a new tradition downtown, where the parade and the bigger festival crowd already gather. Instead it reinforced the West Harrison side, which suggests the two-Main-Street structure isn't an accident of history so much as something the town keeps choosing.
What Else Fills the Week
Two more events round things out without pulling attention from either headline tradition. Harrison Players present "Stage Kiss" by Sarah Ruhl at the Veteran's Memorial Building, 210 Halstead Ave, running October 18 through 20 with a Friday evening show and two performances each on Saturday and Sunday. It's a downtown, indoor option that shares a weekend with the West Harrison Italian Heritage Festival but doesn't compete for the same foot traffic. Tickets are available through Harrison Players.
Passidomo Park pulls its own weight the same weekend. The West Harrison Pickleball Courts host a mixed doubles tournament on October 19 at 9am, which means that side of town has a busy Saturday even before the Italian Heritage Festival opens the following day.
The Full Week, Laid Out
| Date | Event | Location | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 12 (Mon) | 46th Annual Columbus Day Car Show & Music | West Harrison Business District | 10am–4pm |
| Oct 12 (Mon) | Rock Steady Band & Fireworks | West Harrison Firehouse, 95 Lake St | 7pm |
| Oct 13 (Tue) | Harrison Police Open House | 650 North Street | 10am–2pm |
| Oct 14 (Wed) | Parade & Festival | Starts at Thatcher & Halstead, ends at Ma Riis Park | 10am |
| Oct 18–20 (Fri–Sun) | "Stage Kiss" by Sarah Ruhl | Veteran's Memorial Building, 210 Halstead Ave | Fri 8pm, Sat 2pm & 8pm, Sun 2pm |
| Oct 19 (Sat) | Pickleball Mixed Doubles Tournament | Passidomo Park, West Harrison | 9am |
| Oct 20 (Sun) | 4th Annual West Harrison Italian Heritage Festival | Lake Street, West Harrison | 11:30am–7pm |
Planning Around It
A few things follow directly from how the week is structured:
- Expect West Harrison traffic first. The car show closes the Business District for the day on October 12, and Lake Street sees fireworks crowds that same evening. Parking near Silver Lake Park will be tighter than usual.
- Downtown gets its turn on October 14. Thatcher and Halstead close that morning for the parade lineup, and Ma Riis Park absorbs the festival crowd through the afternoon.
- The weekend of October 18 through 20 is a two-track weekend. Downtown residents have an indoor option at the Veteran's Memorial Building while Lake Street runs its own festival and the pickleball courts at Passidomo Park stay busy.
- If you're trying to catch everything, you're covering two ends of town over eight days, not one continuous event.
None of this is likely to change next year's structure, even if the exact dates shift with the calendar again. Harrison's Columbus Day week has kept its shape for years by giving each side of town a full day rather than a shared one, and the 2026 lineup is just the latest version of a schedule that's been consistent even when the sequence hasn't.
The full lineup, with flyers for individual events, is posted on the Town of Harrison's events page.
If you're the kind of Harrison resident who tracks this sort of thing every October, you're exactly who Elka Raved writes these local guides for. More Sound Shore event breakdowns like this one land in her local newsletter as the seasons turn.
