The corn maze, and everything with it
Roughly September into November Ticketed
From early fall until the weather turns, the farm becomes the default weekend outing for a large part of Washington County. The corn maze is the anchor, cut fresh each year into a new design, and around it run a pumpkin patch, farm animals to meet, pig races that are far funnier than they sound, slides, and food.
It works because it is a real farm rather than a set built to look like one. The Staheli family has been farming this ground in Washington Fields since the late 1800s, and the maze is planted in an actual field. That authenticity comes through, particularly to anyone who grew up around agriculture and has been disappointed by the manufactured version elsewhere.
Fall is also simply the best time of year to be outdoors here, so the timing is not an accident. Evenings in October are close to perfect, which is exactly why everyone else has the same idea.
The version after dark
October Separate ticket Not for small children
Once it is properly dark in October, part of the operation turns into a haunted attraction, and this is where I need to be direct with parents. It is not a mild seasonal thing with cardboard skeletons. It is built to frighten adults, with actors, and children who were delighted by the pumpkin patch at four in the afternoon can have a genuinely bad night at nine.
Treat them as two separate outings, because that is what they are. Daytime and early evening is the family version. Late is the other one. The farm signposts this clearly enough, but every year somebody walks a seven year old into it by accident.
If that is your thing, it has a real local following and sells well, so go early in the month before the weekend lines get long.
Two different events, one location. The daytime maze and the after dark attraction are not the same experience. Check which one your tickets are for and what time it switches over.
The December light drive
Through most of December Ticketed by vehicle or by person
In December the same fields fill with a light display you drive through, and it has grown into one of the larger holiday attractions in this part of the state. There are horse drawn rides through the lights for people who would rather not stay in the car, slides, food, and in recent years a drone show, which is a genuinely modern addition to a very old fashioned outing.
There is also a live nativity on a few specific nights, and admission to that portion has typically been free even though the light show itself is not. Dates for it are announced each year and it draws well, so plan around it rather than stumbling into it.
This is the one I would tell a new resident to do in their first December. It is not sophisticated. It is a field full of lights in a warm desert valley in the middle of winter, and it is a decent snapshot of what the holidays feel like in a town where nobody is shoveling anything.
A field full of lights in a warm desert valley in the middle of winter, and nobody is shoveling anything.
What it is the rest of the time
Washington Fields A working farm
Between seasons, it is farmland. That is worth saying because people new to the area sometimes expect a year round attraction and find the gates shut in March. The seasonal events are the public face of an operation that spends the rest of the year doing what farms do.
It also sits in the middle of the fastest changing part of Washington City. Washington Fields was farmland within living memory and is now where most of the city's new construction is going in, which makes a 350 acre working farm in the middle of it a genuinely interesting thing to have as a neighbor. A lot of the new rooftops nearby are built on ground that used to look exactly like this.
Whether that continues is not something I can promise anybody, and I would be careful of anyone who does. What I can say is that it is there now, it is a real part of how this city sees itself, and the corn maze has been an annual fixture for a long time.
Going without regretting it
Timing is everything Weeknights win
The single best piece of advice about this place is about timing rather than tickets. Weekend evenings in peak October and the middle two weeks of December are the busiest hours the farm has, and the difference between a Friday at seven and a Tuesday at five is the difference between a line and a stroll.
Buy ahead where you can, go earlier in each season rather than later, and if you are doing the December lights, understand that the queue to get in can be the longest part of the evening on a bad night. Weeknights early in the month are the local move.
Dress for actual desert temperatures after sundown. It surprises people every year. A November evening in Washington Fields can drop a lot further than the daytime high suggests, and there is no shelter out in an open field.
Local notes on the farm
- Check the schedule before driving out. This is a seasonal operation and which attractions run in a given month changes year to year. A wasted trip to Washington Fields is a small thing but an avoidable one.
- Cash is not the issue, timing is. Peak weekend evenings in October and mid December are the two hardest windows of the year. Anything else is comfortable.
- It is a farm, so the ground is uneven and dusty or muddy depending. Closed shoes over sandals, and a stroller with real wheels if you are bringing one.
- Washington Fields is where most of the city's new construction is going in. If you are looking at homes out here, the farm is a landmark worth orienting yourself around.
