Hay Creek Festival

When

September 11–13, 2026

Where

Historic Joanna Furnace, Geigertown

Admission

Ticketed

The Hay Creek Festival is three days of living history at Historic Joanna Furnace, the 18th-century ironmaking community in southern Berks County that the Hay Creek Valley Historical Association has spent decades restoring. It's the association's flagship event and one of the region's best windows into how an iron plantation actually worked. Joanna Furnace made iron from 1791 into the Industrial Revolution, and during the festival the 26-acre site runs the way it once did: blacksmiths shaping iron in the smithy, the casting house explaining the furnace's ten-plate stoves, woodworkers cutting timber on a pit saw, plus a laundress, weaver, potter, tinsmith, gunsmith, and open-fire cooks working through the day. Threshing demonstrations, a working sawmill, and military encampments round out the grounds, alongside a contemporary craft market and festival food. It's ticketed, family-friendly, and paced for wandering - the kind of festival where kids watch a broom get made and adults leave knowing what a furnace moulder did. Proceeds fund the ongoing restoration of the furnace complex.