Kirkwood Farmers' Market

On Saturday mornings in Kirkwood, Missouri, something predictable and wonderful happens. Before 8am, the stalls along Argonne Drive are filling up. The coffee is poured. The first tomatoes of the season are arranged. Neighbors who haven't seen each other all week are catching up. And the Kirkwood Farmers' Market — one of the most beloved in the St. Louis metro — comes alive for another Saturday, just as it has for fifty years.

The market was founded in 1976 by the City of Kirkwood as a bicentennial project — a gift to the community in the year America turned 200. It was a fitting choice. Kirkwood itself was founded in 1853 as the first planned suburb west of the Mississippi River, platted around the Pacific Railroad by the man whose name it bears: James P. Kirkwood. The historic Kirkwood Train Station, still standing just steps from the market, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A market in a town like this was never just about produce. It was always about place.

The market is administered by the Downtown Kirkwood Special Business District and sits in the heart of a thriving downtown with more than 300 local businesses. What you'll find on a Saturday morning is the best of the St. Louis region: Missouri and Illinois farm products, fresh fruits and vegetables, cheeses, grass-fed beef, free-range eggs, Missouri rainbow trout, poultry, pork, honey, baked goods, jams, specialty artisan foods, soaps, body care, and fine arts and crafts.

At the center of it all is The Summit All Seasons Market — established in 1978 by Carol Mitchell as a produce stand, now operated by her children Dan Mitchell and Kris Clark, with the third generation already involved. Open seven days a week through every season, The Summit is the anchor that keeps the market alive year-round: pumpkins in fall, Christmas trees in winter, seeds and soil in spring.

This year, 2026, the Kirkwood Farmers' Market celebrates its 50th anniversary. Fifty years of Saturday mornings. Fifty years of neighbors becoming community. Fifty years of the simple, irreplaceable thing that happens when farmers and makers and the people who love them all show up in the same place at the same time, week after week. That's not just a farmers market. That's a way of life.