The Tarantulas Are Already Out on the Trails East of Morgan Hill. The Festival Isn't Until October.
August 20, 2026
August 20, 2026
If you've hiked the Corral Trail out of Coe Ranch in the last week or two and noticed something dark and fist-sized ambling across the dirt in no particular hurry, you weren't imagining it. Male tarantulas have been leaving their burrows since mid-August, working their way across the grasslands east of town in search of mates. This goes on for weeks. The Tarantula Fest that most people associate with this whole phenomenon doesn't happen until October 10.
That gap matters more than it sounds like it should. Most residents who've heard of "tarantula season" in Morgan Hill think of it as a single day at Henry W. Coe State Park: buy a ticket, see some spiders, eat a hot dog, go home. But the mating season itself runs roughly from mid-August through early October, and the festival lands almost at the tail end of it. If you wait for the organized event to go looking for tarantulas, you're arriving closer to when the wandering slows down than when it peaks.
The Pine Ridge Association, the nonprofit that's supported Coe Park since 1975, runs the Tarantula Fest at the Coe Ranch entrance on East Dunne Avenue. This year's date is Saturday, October 10. Festival admission itself is free, but you'll pay the standard day-use parking fee of $8 per car, or $7 if you're 62 or older. The day includes volunteer-led hikes built specifically to spot tarantulas in the open, along with live raptor and reptile displays from the Wildlife Education and Rehabilitation Center, geocaching, and talks on the geology and biology of the Diablo Range.
It's a good event. It's also crowded. Parking at Coe Ranch itself is limited on a normal weekend, and on festival day it gets reserved for volunteers running the event, which means everyone else parks at the overflow lot roughly half a mile down the road and walks up. None of that is a complaint about the festival. It's just a reason to know that the roughly eight weeks before it exist, and that they're quieter, less structured, and arguably better for actually seeing what the fuss is about.
Coe Ranch sits about 13 miles east of Highway 101 on East Dunne Avenue, the middle of the three Morgan Hill exits. The drive climbs out of the residential flats, crosses a bridge, runs alongside Anderson Reservoir for a stretch, then narrows into the kind of winding mountain road where you slow down whether you mean to or not. Once you're parked near the visitor center, two short trails do most of the work for a casual look at what's moving through the park right now.
Neither trail requires backcountry experience or a permit beyond the standard day-use fee. Go on a weekday afternoon in late August or a weekend morning in September and there's a decent chance you'll have the trail mostly to yourself, which is not something you can say about the second Saturday in October.
The park itself gives you a sense of why the timing works the way it does. At roughly 2,600 feet, Coe Ranch runs cooler than the valley floor even in early fall, which keeps hiking conditions comfortable through the exact stretch when the tarantulas are most active. The park's own materials describe the animals with a certain affection, calling them "fuzzy, friendly eight-legged guests of honor," which is a fair description once you've actually watched one cross a trail at its own unbothered pace.
Because the best tarantula scouting doesn't require the festival, you can build a full Saturday around it without waiting for October. Two other things changed in Morgan Hill this year that are worth folding into the same trip.
The Morgan Hill Certified Farmers' Market moved to the VTA lot off Butterfield Boulevard as of May 16, 2026, and now runs every Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. If your Coe Park hike wraps up by midmorning, that's an easy stop on the way back into town, and it's a different location than longtime residents may still be picturing.
If your visit falls on the second Saturday of the month, you've also got Sidewalk Saturdays downtown, a monthly small-business and craft market that runs on Third Street from May through November this year. Between the two, a morning hike east of town and an afternoon downtown covers a fuller stretch of what's actually happening in Morgan Hill right now than either one alone.
None of this is really about the spiders. It's about the gap between when a place says something is happening and when it's actually happening, which is a gap that shows up more than people expect once they start paying attention to how their own town runs. The festival is the version of tarantula season that gets a date on a calendar and a mention in the city newsletter. The two months before it are the version that longtime residents already know about, mostly by accident, from a hike they weren't expecting to turn into anything.
If you're already the kind of person who tracks these things about your own neighborhood, that instinct tends to carry over when it's time to think about your house too. Whenever that day comes, whether you're weighing a move or just curious what your place is worth after a season like this one, Kimberly Macias is glad to help. Get your free home valuation whenever you're ready, no festival required.
Get assistance in determining current property value, crafting a competitive offer, writing and negotiating a contract, and much more. Contact me today.