Drive out to Evans Lane in Mohave Valley in August and you will find a locked gate where a farm stand should be. Triple Farms Produce, the small family operation that grows heirloom tomatoes, sells honey and pickles, and keeps a mini cow wandering the property for kids to visit, closes every July and does not reopen until October. It has nothing to do with slow business. The desert gets too hot to grow anything worth selling.
A few miles north on Mohave Drive, a different kind of change has been unfolding at a different pace. Chaparral Golf Course, a nine-hole layout that has served Bullhead City since the late 1960s, spent the back half of 2025 and the first stretch of 2026 changing hands entirely. What used to be a semi-private club with a members-only pool is now, for the first time in its history, a course anyone can walk up to and pay to play.
A farm stand and a municipal golf course have nothing to do with each other on paper. But both flipped status inside the same twelve-month window, and both flips land right as the heat finally breaks. If you want a real marker for when fall starts in Bullhead City, skip the calendar. Watch these two addresses.
The Farm That Closes on Purpose
Triple Farms sits off Highway 95 in Mohave Valley, reachable by turning onto Courtwright Road and then Evans Lane, about 2.6 miles in. For most of the year it is open Wednesdays and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., selling fresh-picked vegetables, herbs, homemade bread, honey, pickles, and eggs. Then July hits, and the farm shuts down completely through August and September. Growing heirloom produce in triple-digit heat is not a business model, so the family that runs it simply waits out the summer.
October flips that switch back on, and this year the reopening lines up with the Annual Fall Market Festival at Triple Farms, set for October 17. Past editions of this festival have paired the regular farmers market with a pumpkin patch, animal visits, and local vendors selling crafts, vintage finds, and baked goods, so residents heading out for opening weekend can expect that same combination of shopping and family activities rather than a scaled-down reopening.
The farm has also become the site for something smaller but worth knowing about if you have kids: a partnership with the community group Make Bullhead Better called the Little Sprouts Farmers Market, open to children ages 6 to 18 who want to run their own small stand. Arizona does not require a business license for minors earning under $10,000 a year, and the program uses that rule to let kids launch actual mini-businesses at a farm that already draws hundreds of visitors most weekends.
The Golf Course That Stopped Being Private
Chaparral's story moved slower and involved more paperwork. In September 2025, the Bullhead City Council authorized an agreement to take title to the nine-hole course and the surrounding property, a deal that required the city to absorb more than $400,000 in outstanding debt tied to the old ownership. As part of that agreement, the city committed to operating the property as a golf course for at least the next ten years. Ownership formally transferred that November.
The months since have been about turning a private asset into a public one. The Chaparral Golf Course website now describes the transition as complete, with the facility "officially a municipal asset" under the care of the Bullhead City Parks Maintenance Division, which has spent the time since improving turf conditions and reopening what used to be a members-only pool and clubhouse to the general public. City officials framed the acquisition as protecting more than recreation, noting that the property also carries a storm water basin and a wastewater lift station that the city needed to control directly.
"A vital part of our city's infrastructure and quality of life."
That is how officials described Chaparral when the transition was announced, and the practical result for anyone who lives here is a course with straightforward, posted pricing instead of a membership waiting list. Nine holes run $25 per person, eighteen holes run $30, and cart rentals add $5 or $10 depending on how many holes you play. The clubhouse restaurant has settled into a weekly rhythm that gives locals a reason to show up even on nights they are not golfing:
- Rib Night, Tuesdays from 5 to 7 p.m.
- Home Cooking Night, Thursdays from 5 to 7 p.m.
- Fish Fry Friday, Fridays from 5 to 7 p.m.
- Live music, Saturdays
What the Calendar Actually Looks Like
Both reopenings land inside a broader fall stretch that is worth mapping out, because several of the season's biggest draws cluster into a three-week window in October before spreading out again in November.
| Date | What's happening | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Oct. 3 | Farmers Market season opener, themed "Haunted Harvest" | Community Park |
| Oct. 16-17 | Oatman Haunted Nights | Historic Route 66, Oatman |
| Oct. 17 | Annual Fall Market Festival | Triple Farms Produce, Evans Lane |
| Oct. 17 | Fall Senior Summit & Community Pumpkin Patch | Trane Road, near Ken Fovargue Park |
| Nov. 14-15 | Dia De Los Locos music festival | John & Olivia McCormick Performing Arts Pavilion |
| November | Paul Walsh Veterans Day Parade | Miracle Mile, near Riverview Mall |
The Bullhead City Farmers Market itself opens its new season on October 3 with a Halloween-leaning theme, live music, and the usual mix of vendors and food trucks at Community Park, kicking off a run of themed Saturdays that will carry through the winter. A week and a half later, the calendar gets crowded fast, with the Fall Market Festival at Triple Farms sharing a Saturday with a senior-focused pumpkin patch event elsewhere in town.
The Parade That Kept Its Founder's Name
November's centerpiece is the Paul Walsh Veterans Day Parade, an annual event that begins near Riverview Mall and proceeds down Miracle Mile with floats, marching bands, car clubs, and veterans' groups competing for awards on the most patriotic entries. The parade carries the name of a Korean War veteran who helped establish it in the first place, and the city has kept that name attached even as the event has grown. It is one of the few fixtures on the fall calendar that has stayed exactly the same shape while everything around it changes.
November also brings the Dia De Los Locos music festival, a two-day run of touring acts and local talent at the John & Olivia McCormick Performing Arts Pavilion on November 14 and 15, giving residents a reason to plan an entire mid-November weekend around downtown rather than driving to Laughlin or Kingman for a show.
Why This Is the Real Signal
None of this shows up on a weather forecast. A farm's growing calendar and a municipal golf course's ownership paperwork are about as unrelated as two local stories can be, yet both concluded on nearly the same timeline this year, and both concluded by opening a gate that had been closed. That is a better fall indicator than the first cool morning, because it reflects decisions people in this town actually made rather than a shift in the jet stream.
If you live in Bullhead City, you already know summer here is something you get through rather than enjoy outdoors. Fall is when Triple Farms unlocks Evans Lane again and when Fish Fry Friday actually has a crowd at Chaparral. Everything else on the calendar, from the Haunted Harvest market to the Veterans Day Parade down Miracle Mile, fills in around those two reopenings rather than the other way around.
If you're thinking about property in Bullhead City or anywhere else along the river, from a golf-course lot near Chaparral to acreage out toward Mohave Valley, Lisa Turner and the Destination Havasu team know this stretch of Mohave County block by block. Reach out when you're ready to talk specifics.
