East Mountain families hunting for a weekend plan that amounts to more than a hill of beans can head to Moriarty, where the annual Pinto Bean Fiesta opens Friday evening with a balloon glow and rolls into a parade, marketplace and street dance Saturday.
The City of Moriarty opens the celebration Friday, Sept. 25, with an illuminated hot air balloon glow starting at 6 p.m. at Sierra Blanca Brewery. Saturday’s parade steps off at 10 a.m. from US Route 66 and Holiday Street on the town’s west end, then marches east along the south lanes of Route 66 to Crossley Park.
Once the last float passes, Moriarty City Park, 201 Broadway St. South, becomes an open-air marketplace packed with local booths, food stands, games, live music and community displays. The fun runs through dusk and wraps with a community dance after dark.
The fiesta celebrates the crop that put Moriarty on the map. After the New Mexico Central Railroad arrived in 1903, homesteaders discovered the valley’s calcium-rich soil, warm days and cool nights made ideal conditions for drought-tolerant pinto beans. By the World Wars, local grower cooperatives had earned the town its reputation as the “Pinto Bean Capital of the World.”
Brutal droughts in the 1950s pushed many growers toward irrigated alfalfa, corn and cattle, but some multigenerational farm families kept planting beans. The fiesta keeps that harvest, and that history, in the spotlight.
Moriarty Pinto Bean Fiesta
- Friday, Sept. 25: Balloon glow at 6 p.m., Sierra Blanca Brewery
- Saturday, Sept. 26: Parade at 10 a.m., from US Route 66 and Holiday Street east to Crossley Park; Mean Bean 5K; park marketplace to follow; dance at dark
- Parade entrants: Line up at 9 a.m.; enter on Tulane Street and follow signs
- Where: Moriarty City Park, 201 Broadway St. South
- Online: moriartynm.org/liseevents/PINTO-BEAN-FIESTA