5 Vermont Towns That Run Out of Parking Every Foliage Season

Vermont’s Department of Tourism and Marketing found that only 59% of the crowd that swarmed the state for the April 2024 total eclipse left the same day.

Fall foliage visitors typically stay several nights in one town instead.

Those cars have to go somewhere.

These are the Vermont towns that run out of parking every foliage season.

1. Pomfret

Pomfret’s Cloudland Road turns into a parking lot every fall once photographers track down Sleepy Hollow Farm, the red farmhouse and rolling hills behind it.

A wave of social media traffic turned the farm into one of the state’s most photographed views.

Neighbors organized a 2024 GoFundMe campaign describing visitors parking in fields and driveways, trampling gardens, and needing to be towed out of ditches during past foliage seasons.

Keeping the road open for emergency vehicles became the town’s top stated enforcement priority once the closures began.

Pomfret has closed Cloudland Road to outside traffic every fall since 2023.

The 2025 closure marked the third year running, with the road shut to non-local drivers from early October into the middle of the month.

That farmhouse hasn’t moved, but the crowd chasing it keeps growing every year.

2. Reading

Reading deals with the same parking crunch on Jenne Road, where visitors chase a view of Jenne Farm, a hilltop property.

News outlets have called it another of the state’s most photographed farms.

Chase Jenne, who approached the town on behalf of Jenne Road residents, told the Selectboard that cars had blocked the road.

Tourists had also walked into homes along it to use the bathroom without permission.

Reading closed Jenne Road to non-local traffic for the third fall running in 2025.

When signage first went up in 2023, Reading’s Selectboard chair said it cut down on the disruption compared with the year before.

It didn’t erase the problem.

Some drivers rerouted to nearby Route 106 that year, and the same parking problem followed them there.

3. Woodstock

Woodstock’s downtown parking fills up fast once its Welcome Center starts logging more than 1,000 visitors a day.

The town clocked that pace through the first weeks of October last year.

Its Selectboard didn’t identify any parking beyond the town’s normal capacity for this year’s crowd, so weekends now send overflow visitors to the elementary school’s parking lot instead.

Officials also set aside $5,000 for portable toilets behind the Welcome Center and restricted part of Cloudland Road for 18 days this fall, from Sept. 26 through Oct. 13.

That’s more than two weeks with one fewer route through town.

Plan around it.

4. Huntington

Huntington’s parking lot for the Camel’s Hump trailhead holds about 20 cars, while as many as 100 hikers try to reach the summit once the leaves turn each fall.

Its town administrator points to a rise in hiking since the pandemic as the reason more cars keep showing up.

Visitors who arrive after the parking lot fills have parked on residents’ front lawns, according to the town.

Huntington reenacted an old parking ordinance in 2025, posted no-parking signs, and towed a handful of violators that fall.

The problem hasn’t gone away since.

The town is now working with the state on adding parking spaces, though officials say that could be years away.

A tow costs far more than a morning hike is supposed to.

5. Stowe

Stowe’s parking crunch tracks the growth its Welcome Center is logging: More than 10,000 visitors in October last year, up from 6,500 the October before.

One Saturday alone brought in 1,148 people, nearly double the 581 who came through on the same weekend in 2024.

That kind of jump is why town officials are no longer treating this year’s festival parking as routine.

Stowe’s event permit for the Foliage Arts Festival, held Oct. 9-11 this year, plans for up to 1,000 cars a day.

The permit lists no backup lot unless the police or fire department calls for extra parking.

That’s the plan if this year’s crowd matches last year’s growth.

The event moved to Mayo Farm this year after Selectboard members raised traffic concerns about its old spot at Topnotch Field.

Stowe’s visitor center says the only complaints it hears from foliage-season visitors are requests for a little less traffic, a little more parking, and a few more public restrooms.

Even that list is short.

The Numbers Behind the Crunch

The state’s tourism office puts foliage-season visitor spending at about $500 million a year, spread across roughly 2.5 million visitors.

That’s a lot of money moving through towns with only a handful of paved spaces to catch it.

The math is simple.

Foliage visitors also stay longer than a typical day-tripper, which keeps more cars parked in town for more hours at a stretch.

Fifty-nine percent of the state’s April 2024 eclipse crowd left the same day, while foliage travelers more often book multiple nights in one town.