5th annual Tarantula Festival crawls into La Junta

The rural Colorado town's internationally-known festival celebrates the tarantula’s mating seasons, a time when thousands of tarantulas come out en masse towards the end of September and through October in southeastern Colorado.  

“So often when we’re doing our work… the question is why do you work with tarantulas,” said Cara Shillington, a biology professor at Eastern Michigan University whose lab group has been conducting field research in La Junta since 2022.

“And I feel like when we come here, people are always excited.”

Tickets for La Junta’s tarantula bus tours this year sold out in just three minutes, according to Pamela Denahy, the director of tourism and economic development for the City of La Junta. Visitors are traveling in from places like Seattle, Utah, Texas, Atlanta and New York, she said. 

“It's just a great way for us to share this wonderful natural phenomenon that we have that takes place on our over 400,000 acres of public land,” said Denahy. 

Despite the festival's growing national and international attention, Denahy said she is focused on responsible growth, and emphasized her team's goals of keeping visitors safe and protecting the grasslands and the tarantulas. Which is why the tourism team is capping the tarantula tours to six city buses.

“We don't anticipate adding a lot of buses in the future because we want to remain authentic to our community and who we are,” she said. 

More than 100 food, merchant and nonprofit vendors will attend the festival. Other activities include spider-themed movie nights, an art show and tarantula expert talks from Shillington and Paula Cushing, senior curator of invertebrate zoology at Denver Museum of Nature and Science. 

To close out the festival on Saturday night, History Colorado is hosting a drone show as part of its “Stories in the Sky” series in celebration of America’s 250th and Colorado’s 150th anniversaries. 

Steve Keefer, a tarantula tour guide and former Colorado Parks and Wildlife district wildlife manager, said he is focused on visitor’s safety. 

“Don’t pick ’em up,” Keefer said. 

Keefer, who has been on the Tarantula Festival’s planning board since it started in 2021, said he recalls a time during a previous Tarantula Festival where someone laid in the middle of the road for a photo. Keefer said he advises against this because it is very dangerous because of oncoming traffic. If people do lay on the ground for a photo, he said, they should have another person as a “spotter” to be vigilant of oncoming traffic. 

Keefer also advises visitors to wear bright colors because it is hunting season, and to be wary of the cattle grazing on public lands, especially if visitors are bringing their dogs into the grasslands. 

Visitors can learn more about the festival and how to stay safe at the City of La Junta’s website here.