Last October, on the banks of the Piscataquog River, Kristal Delahanty pulled ahead by a paddle's length and held on. She was racing a hollowed-out, thousand-pound pumpkin dressed as the Cheshire Cat, representing a local pet-sitting business called Gotta Go Pet Care. Behind her, closing fast, was Zeb Groover of the Granite YMCA, costumed as the King of Hearts. Third place went to Stephanie Ashworth of NH Job Corps. It was the 24th time Goffstown had done this, and the margin at the finish line was close enough that half of Main Street was still talking about it a week later.
This fall, the town runs it back for a 25th time. That number matters less as a trivia fact and more as a marker: this is a tradition old enough that the people racing pumpkins down the river now are, in some cases, the children of the people who raced them at the start. And the list of who actually shows up to race says something about Goffstown that a quieter town couldn't fake.
A Weigh-In Before the Boats
The weekend starts on the ground, not the water. Growers from across the state bring pumpkins that can top 1,000 pounds to the Goffstown Common for the New Hampshire Giant Pumpkin Growers Association's annual weigh-off, a Saturday event that's become the unofficial kickoff to the town's fall calendar. The pumpkins that pass muster get scooped out and turned into boats over the following hours, which means the vessel that wins on Sunday was, less than a day earlier, still sitting in someone's garden.
The Sunday race itself runs a short stretch of the Piscataquog, from around Mill Street down to the Main Street bridge, with paddles or small motors doing the propulsion. It's not a long course. It doesn't need to be. The Piscataquog itself carries an Abenaki name meaning "where the river divides," and for one weekend a year, that division point becomes the town's main stage, with crowds lining both banks and the bridge itself.
By the numbers Goffstown Main Street Program has tracked, the crowd has grown every year. Board president Tina Lawton has described families from other states, and occasionally other countries, timing their visits to Goffstown around this specific weekend so relatives can be there together. That's an unusual thing for a two-day festival built entirely by volunteers to pull off, and it's worth sitting with for a second if you've lived here long enough to take it for granted.
The Boats Are a Roster of Businesses You Already Know
Here's the detail that made this piece worth writing. The pumpkin boats aren't built by a events company or bused in from outside. They're captained by the same names on the storefronts and vans you pass every week. Foremost Builders has raced a pirate ship called "The Grim Gourd." Mountain Base Yoga has entered a pumpkin decorated as a giant pie. The Village Trestle, Goffstown Lions Club, and the Congregational Church of Goffstown have all fielded boats in past years, alongside Green Thumb and the state pumpkin growers association itself. This isn't a spectator event bolted onto downtown for a weekend. It's downtown racing itself down the river, in costume, for bragging rights and a trophy that doesn't leave much of a mark on anyone's bottom line.
That distinction matters for what this event actually tells you about the town. A festival that outside vendors truck in and truck out again doesn't build the kind of continuity where a business owner spends a Sunday afternoon soaked from the waist down because they lost their footing paddling a vegetable. Goffstown's does, most years including a boat or two that tips over entirely, and everyone on the bank cheers just as hard for the capsize as the finish.
Who's Sponsoring This Year
The 2026 event page from Goffstown Main Street Program confirms the tradition is intact and, if anything, more in demand than ever. Vendor registration for this year's regatta was already full as of September 13, meaning the businesses that wanted a table downtown had to claim their spot a month before the event.
This year's sponsor list reads like a cross-section of the same Main Street the boats represent:
- Deb Chabot of State Farm Insurance, as weekend sponsor
- Franklin Savings Bank, sponsoring the weigh-off
- Continental Paving, on concessions
- Main Street Eye Care, Tru Home Inspections, and The Grotto Salt Caves, backing the slingshot contests
- Gregg Flegal of Edward Jones, sponsoring the tote bags
- The Grotto Salt Caves again, on the mini pumpkin race
None of these are chains headquartered somewhere else. They're the same small businesses that sponsor the youth soccer league and the church rummage sale, showing up again in October with their name on a banner along the same stretch of Main Street.
What the Weekend Actually Looks Like
If you haven't been down to the river for this one before, or you go every year but never quite catch the full sequence, here's the shape of it based on how the event has run in recent years:
- Saturday opens with the giant pumpkin arrivals and the state weigh-off on the Common, drawing growers and their trucks from across New Hampshire.
- The heaviest pumpkins get carved out over the day, turning garden trophies into race-ready hulls.
- Vendor booths, contests, and family activities fill downtown Goffstown through the afternoon and into the evening, including the pie eating and pet costume contests that have become fixtures alongside the main event.
- Sunday brings a road race through town before the crowds shift toward the river.
- The Pumpkin Regatta itself runs mid-afternoon, from Mill Street down to the Main Street bridge, with the crowd packed along both banks and the bridge itself.
None of this requires advance planning beyond picking a good spot along the riverbank early. Parking downtown fills fast on race day, and the Goffstown Rail Trail, which runs along the same river past Glen Lake, is a reasonable walk-in option if you'd rather skip the search for a parking space entirely.
Why This Keeps Working
Twenty-five years is long enough that a festival can calcify into something a town does out of habit rather than enthusiasm. That doesn't seem to be what's happening here. The crowd numbers keep climbing, the vendor slots keep filling earlier, and the same collection of local builders, yoga studios, banks, insurance agents, and civic groups keeps showing up to put their name on a boat that's going to get wet, possibly capsize, and definitely draw a crowd of neighbors laughing on the bank.
That's a specific kind of town identity, and it's not one you can manufacture with a bigger marketing budget. It comes from a Main Street where the businesses are small enough, and known well enough, that racing a hollowed-out pumpkin in costume is a completely normal way to spend a Sunday afternoon in October.
If you're already planning where to stand along the river this year, you've got company. And if you're the kind of person who reads about a hometown festival and starts wondering what else you don't know about the town you live in, that curiosity is worth following. Connie Distasio has spent years paying attention to the small details that make Goffstown and the towns around it worth knowing well. Let's Connect if there's ever a question about this place, real estate or otherwise, that you'd like a straight answer to.
