If you live along Old Highway 64 in Warne, you've probably built a working theory about the road's seasons. Summer means tubers with wet water shoes drying on truck beds, coolers strapped to roof racks, cars coming and going from Brasstown Creek all day. Fall means the tubers go home and the road settles back into its usual rhythm, quiet enough that you notice a car you don't recognize.
That theory holds until the middle of October, when it breaks completely.
Warne doesn't have its own square or its own stoplight. It's an unincorporated community strung along one road, the same Old Highway 64 that connects Hayesville to the northeast and Brasstown to the northwest, with the county providing whatever services exist because there's no town government to provide them locally. That geography matters more than it sounds like it should, because every event that pulls traffic through the area lands on this same stretch of asphalt, just at different mile markers along it. Run to Hogsed's General Store for milk and you're on it. Head either direction for dinner and you're on it. There's no bypass to route around what's happening on it.
This fall, three unrelated schedules line up close enough together that the road spends about six weeks doing more work than it does the rest of the year combined.
A festival that pulls in two directions at once
The Clay County Chamber of Commerce's Punkin Chunkin Festival is marking its 15th year in 2026, and its structure is worth laying out plainly, because it doesn't happen in one place. It happens in two, on consecutive nights, in opposite directions from Warne.
Friday, October 16, opens the weekend with the Anything Pumpkin competition and chili cook-off on the Historic Hayesville Square, starting at 6 p.m. with tickets sold first come, first served. That pulls traffic east out of Warne toward Hayesville.
Saturday and Sunday, October 17 and 18, the festival itself takes over 811 Settawig Road in Brasstown, running 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days with $5 parking and $5 admission. Trebuchets and air cannons launch pumpkins through the morning and again after lunch, alongside pie-eating contests, craft vendors, old-time tractors, hayrides, and a Kidzone for anyone under twelve who isn't interested in catapult physics. That pulls traffic northwest, the opposite direction.
Here's the part a visitor would never notice but a resident feels immediately: Warne sits almost exactly between the two sites. The same location that puts you close enough to walk into either event also means you're catching both directions of drive-through traffic on back-to-back nights, which doesn't happen with anything else on the local calendar.
| Event | Date | Location | Direction from Warne |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anything Pumpkin & Chili Cook-off | Fri, Oct 16 | Historic Hayesville Square | East |
| Punkin Chunkin main festival | Sat-Sun, Oct 17-18 | 811 Settawig Road, Brasstown | Northwest |
The track keeps a different calendar
A few miles up the same road from Warne, on Old Highway 64 in Brasstown, Tri-County Race Track runs on a schedule that has nothing to do with pumpkins or creek water. The 2026 season opened Memorial Day weekend with the track's Memorial Day Mash on May 22, and by early September it was still drawing a full field of cars.
The track's Labor Day special on September 4 pulled nine entries in Limited Late Models, seven in 604 Crate Late Models, nine more in 602 Crate Late Models, thirteen in Hobby Sportsman, five Street Stocks, four Open Wheel Modifieds, eight Stock Front Wheel Drives, and three Crown Vics onto a single card. That's not a small night for a dirt oval this size. Short tracks like this one typically carry their season from spring through the back half of fall before the cold shuts things down for winter, which means the track's loudest remaining Saturdays overlap almost exactly with the run-up to Punkin Chunkin.
For anyone within earshot of Old Highway 64 between Warne and Brasstown, that overlap is audible before it's visible. Engine noise on a race night and extra traffic on a festival weekend are two different sounds, but this fall they're landing in the same few weeks.
The water goes quiet, the building doesn't
West Tubing Company built its business on Brasstown Creek at the site of the old Tellico Lace plant, which founder Dave West bought in 2018 after growing up on a family farm nearby with that same creek in his backyard. Commercial tubing launched there in the spring of 2021, and the float season has followed a predictable arc ever since, reopening each May once the water warms and thinning out as the creek cools heading into fall.
What's easy to miss, if you only think about the tubing side of the operation, is that the property doesn't actually go dark when the floats stop. The Lace Factory Antiques, housed in the same building that used to run lace looms, stays open year-round, along with the campground on site. The outpost that reads as a summer-only business is really two businesses sharing one address on Old Hwy 64, one seasonal and one that runs every month of the year.
That distinction carries more weight in a community this size than it would almost anywhere else. Census Bureau business data from 2024 counted just 11 business establishments in Warne, employing about 31 people combined. When a single property accounts for two of those eleven listings, its calendar shapes a real share of the local economy, not just the traffic count on the road out front.
What the next six weeks actually look like
Put the three schedules next to each other and the picture isn't really about fall arriving. It's about three unrelated calendars briefly running in parallel on the same road.
- The race track's season is in its final stretch, with Saturday cards still drawing full fields through fall before the usual winter pause.
- The float season on Brasstown Creek is winding down as the water cools, even as the antiques shop and campground next door keep their normal year-round hours.
- Punkin Chunkin lands October 16 through 18, pulling traffic in two directions from Warne on consecutive days.
None of this was coordinated. The Chamber didn't build its festival dates around the race track's schedule, and the track didn't plan its season around water temperature on Brasstown Creek. They just happen to land in the same six weeks every year, which is why a road that feels sleepy most of the year suddenly carries festival traffic, race night traffic, and the last of the tubing crowd almost at once.
If you've lived on Old 64 long enough, you already adjust for this without thinking much about it. If you're newer to the area, it's worth knowing that the quiet stretch you got used to over the summer is about to look different for a few weeks, not because anything has changed about Warne itself, but because three separate calendars all happen to hit their marks at the same time.
Understanding a road's actual rhythm, not just its listing photos, is part of what it means to know a place well. If you're weighing a move to Warne or anywhere else along Old Highway 64, Melissa Jenkins Stillwell can walk you through what daily life here looks like in every season, not just the ones that photograph well. Schedule a free consultation to start the conversation.
