Walk into Parking Field 8 at Eisenhower Park on a Saturday morning right now and you'll find the same setup that's been running since June 20: tents, folding tables, a line for whatever's ripest that week. Nothing about it looks like it's ending. But as of today, five Saturdays remain before the season closes for good on October 31, and the market isn't the only part of the park working against that same calendar.
Most people who use Eisenhower Park regularly assume it just quietly downshifts as the weather turns, fewer people at the pool, a little less traffic on the trails. That's not quite what happens. Specific pieces of the park hit hard stops within days of each other at the end of October, while other pieces don't stop at all. Knowing which is which changes how you plan the next month.
Five Saturdays, Then the Market Is Gone
The CCE Nassau Farmers Market at Eisenhower Park runs Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Parking Field 8, near the Merrick and Stewart Avenues entrance. It was established in 2021 at Nassau County's request, and it's run by Cornell Cooperative Extension of Nassau County rather than the county parks department directly, which is worth knowing if you've ever tried to get information about it from the wrong office.
The 2026 season's final day is Saturday, October 31, which means this year the market's last Saturday and Halloween fall on the same date. That's not a coincidence anyone planned around, it's just where the calendar landed. From today, that leaves five Saturdays: October 3, 10, 17, 24, and 31.
It's worth knowing that Eisenhower's market doesn't share an end date with every other Saturday market in the county. Long Beach's Farmers Market and Arts in the Plaza, Roslyn's market on Pennsylvania Avenue, and the Great Neck market at Jonathan L. Ielpi Firefighters Park all run on their own separate schedules, some tied to their own villages rather than the county parks system. If you split your Saturdays between two or three of these, Eisenhower's is the one that disappears first among that group this year.
The Mini Golf Course Closes on the County's Clock, Not the Weather's
A few hundred yards from the market, the park's two 18-hole mini golf courses, named Orange and Blue, run through terraced landscaping with a waterfall and small ponds near the Nassau County Aquatic Center. According to the county's own parks page, the mini golf season runs May through October every year. That's a fixed operating window, not a weather call. A warm, dry Saturday in November won't reopen it. If mini golf is part of your family's fall rotation, the practical move is to get the last round in before the month closes, not to wait for a nice day and assume the gates will still be up.
The Full Golf Courses Don't Close, They Just Get Quieter
This is where the park splits from itself. Eisenhower's three 18-hole public courses, Red, White, and Blue, don't share the mini golf course's fixed end date. The White course, designed by Robert Trent Jones, and the Blue course stay open daily through the winter as weather allows. The driving range runs dawn to dusk from March into early winter. The Red course carries the most history of the three: designed in 1914 by Devereux Emmet, it hosted PGA Championship play as far back as 1926 and later hosted the Commerce Bank Championship on the PGA Tour Champions circuit, last held in 2008.
So the same 930-acre park has one amenity that closes on a fixed date regardless of temperature and three others that stay open as long as the ground is playable. That's the distinction that gets lost when people talk about the park "closing for the season," because no single part of it actually does.
What Already Wrapped Before the Market Even Noticed
Two things that felt like they were still part of the current season have already ended.
The Harry Chapin Lakeside Theatre's free outdoor concert and movie series, presented by the Nassau County Department of Parks, Recreation and Museums, is built as a summer program, and it wrapped before Labor Day. If you were waiting for one more Friday night show at the amphitheater by the lake, that window closed weeks ago.
The same stage got one more use after the concert series ended. On Sunday, September 20, the park hosted its fourth annual Mid-Autumn Moon Festival at the Lakeside Theatre, with the festival grounds opening at noon, a pre-show at 5 p.m., and the main performances at 6 p.m. out of Parking Fields 6 and 6A. Guests were invited to release lanterns onto Salisbury Lake, the same lake the 9/11 memorial towers stand beside. A rain date of October 4 was built in, which tells you the county expected this to be one of the last big scheduled draws to that part of the park before it goes quiet until next summer.
Here's how the pieces line up against each other right now:
| Park feature | 2026 schedule | Status as of late September |
|---|---|---|
| CCE Farmers Market | Saturdays, 9 a.m.-1 p.m. | 5 Saturdays left, ends Oct. 31 |
| Mini golf (Orange & Blue courses) | Open May through October | Closes by end of October |
| Red, White, Blue golf courses | Year-round, weather permitting | No fixed close date |
| Harry Chapin Lakeside Theatre concerts | Summer series only | Already ended before Labor Day |
| Mid-Autumn Moon Festival | One day, Sept. 20 (rain date Oct. 4) | Already held |
Why This Matters for How You Use the Next Five Weeks
None of this is a reason to treat the park differently in some big-picture sense. It's a reason to be specific about which part of your routine is on borrowed time. If Saturday mornings at Parking Field 8 are part of how you use the park, that routine has a hard stop five weeks from now, not a gradual fade. If mini golf after dinner is part of your family's fall, the same is true. If it's the walking paths, the driving range, or a weekend round on the White or Blue course, none of that changes when the calendar flips to November.
The park was established as Nassau County Park at Salisbury in 1944 and renamed for President Eisenhower in 1969, and in the decades since it's picked up enough separately-run pieces, a farmers market operated by Cornell Cooperative Extension, a mini golf concession with its own season, county-run golf courses, a summer concert series, that it doesn't behave like one calendar. It behaves like several calendars stacked on top of each other, and late October is when three of them happen to end in the same week.
If you're planning to make it back to Eisenhower Park before that window closes, that's a decision worth making in the next few weekends rather than the next few months.
If you're the kind of person who tracks these details about the park down the street, chances are you're also the kind of person we'd like to talk to about what's happening in the Nassau County market this fall. The Legacy Team keeps an eye on both. Schedule a free consultation whenever you're ready to talk about what's next.
