FAIRMONT – Main Street Fairmont’s 2026 Hometown Market series will feature everything from danceable tunes and vine-ripened tomatoes – to celebrations of heritage and diversity of place in the present day.
Events will run on select Saturdays from May through September on Monroe Street, in the heart of the historic Marion County city, director Alex Petry said.
“We’re pretty special,” he said. “There’s some character here.”
Characters who know how to make music will kick it off May 16, with the “Music on Monroe” concerts from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Petry said.
Vendors, artisans and representatives of nonprofit groups will fill Monroe during the Pride Block Party, in partnership with Fairmont Pride, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. June 20.
Monroe will make for a Merry Christmas of the early kind with the Feast in July gathering from 4 to 8 p.m. July 18. Petry calls the inaugural event summer’s new opening act to the Feast of the Seven Fishes Festival, which celebrates the city’s Italian lineage every December.
Everyone’s favorite vine-ripened delight takes center stage during the Hometown Market’s Tomato Festival, which will be from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Aug. 15 on Monroe, with the help of Marion County’s Master Gardeners.
Plans for the end-of-summer wrap on Monroe on Sept. 19 are still being finalized, Petry said, but a Fairmont State University tie-in will definitely be part of the proceedings.
Meanwhile, Petry has been part of the proceedings in Fairmont and Marion County since the day he was born.
“I’m ‘of’ this place,” he said.
His prowess as a swimmer at Fairmont Senior High School was his scholarship ticket to Fairmont State, where he starred on the varsity team en route to earning an MBA. He stayed on as an assistant swim coach while working for the city.
“I never really left,” he said – and there’s a reason why.
He simply likes living here, he said.
“There’s a lot of history that people don’t always realize,” the Main Street director said.
Fairmont, for example, is the hometown of Francis Pierpont, an Abraham Lincoln confidante who served as governor of the Restored Virginia after the Civil War.
The city bisected by the Monongahela River is recognized as the birthplace of the pepperoni roll, West Virginia’s iconic snack food.
Fairmont was also home to the state’s first shopping mall – when Middletown Mall opened in 1969.
Johnnie Johnson hails from here. The boogie-woogie piano player and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member, who grew up on Pennsylvania Avenue, gave Chuck Berry his first gig in St. Louis while helping write some of Berry’s biggest jukebox hits in the 1950s.
“We have all that character and this great architecture and a vibrant downtown,” Petry said.
“All you need to do is pay us a visit.”
