Randall Oaks Zoo turned 60 this year. Woodfire Dundee just picked up the Chicago Tribune's 2026 Pizza of the Year award. Heritage Fest, the volunteer-run weekend that's anchored West Dundee since before most residents were born, is spreading across three separate stretches of town this September instead of clustering in one plaza. None of these things happened because of each other. But this fall, for the first time in a while, they line up on the same calendar and the same half-mile of riverbank, which means the version of West Dundee you can actually walk through this season looks different than it did even two years ago.
If you've lived here a while, you already have a mental map of these landmarks. What's changed is how close together they now sit, and what each one is doing differently than it used to.
The Zoo Just Turned 60 and Quietly Stopped Closing for Winter
Randall Oaks Zoo, tucked 2.5 miles north of I-90 off Randall Road, is marking its 60th anniversary this year as a facility of the Dundee Township Park District. That's the headline most people will notice. The quieter change is operational: the zoo's new World of Wonders building lets it house more animals on exhibit and, according to the park district, allows the zoo to operate year-round for the first time.
That matters more than it sounds like it should. Before this building opened, a small suburban zoo built on a former dairy farm didn't have the indoor capacity to keep running through the coldest stretch of the year. Now it does. The published hours still shrink in winter, dropping to 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. from November 2 through December 30 and again from January 2 through March 27, compared to 9 to 5 the rest of the year, but the zoo no longer goes dark. If you've always thought of Randall Oaks as a May-through-September stop, this is the season to recalibrate. It's now a place you can plan a January Saturday around, not just a July one.
Heritage Fest Spread Itself Across Three Addresses This Year
Heritage Fest runs September 18 through 20 this year, and the Village of West Dundee still bills it as a free three-day community event. What's easy to miss if you haven't looked at the footprint closely is that it no longer lives in one spot. The event now spans downtown, South Second Street, and the Riverwalk, three distinct zones that don't sit on top of each other.
The car show, for instance, sets up specifically along South Second Street, starting at the 100 south block by Village Hall and running toward Liberty Street, typically 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. The live music, vendor booths, and the community pancake breakfast draw from the downtown core. The Riverwalk stretch, meanwhile, is where the festival meets the Fox River directly, on the same ground where the village's own historical marker traces West Dundee's name back to a Scottish settler in 1837.
If you're planning to hit all of it, that's not a stroll from one tent to the next. It's a route, and this year it's a longer one than it used to be. Worth building in time to walk between zones rather than assuming everything's within shouting distance of Village Hall.
The Trail Is What Makes This a Loop, Not a Handful of Errands
None of this would connect as cleanly without the Fox River Trail, which runs directly through West Dundee on its way between Algonquin and points south through Elgin and beyond. The trail itself isn't news. What's useful is how many access points sit within a short stretch of the river right here, each with its own character:
- McNamee Park, at river mile 76.7, a straightforward carry-in access point
- Downtown West Dundee, at river mile 75.9, which doubles as the Riverwalk itself, with parking, fishing, and hiking access right where Heritage Fest's third zone sets up
- South End Park, at river mile 75.2, offering restrooms, shelter, picnicking, a playground, and its own biking access
- Voyageur Landing Forest Preserve, split into north and south sections just south of downtown, with a busy boat launch on a wide pool of the river popular for canoes and kayaks
String those together and you've got a corridor that runs from the zoo's back gate down through downtown and past the festival grounds to a forest preserve boat launch, almost entirely off-street. Riders who've done this exact stretch, from West Dundee north toward Algonquin, describe catching the leaves just starting to turn, which lines up well with both Heritage Fest weekend and the zoo's shift into its shorter fall hours.
What's Cooking Along the Way
The dining scene sitting along that same corridor has picked up two data points worth knowing if you haven't eaten out locally in a while.
Woodfire Dundee, the family-owned wood-fired pizza spot known for its five-day fermented dough and scratch-made pasta under chef Mason Riedl, won the Chicago Tribune's 2026 Pizza of the Year award. That's not a local blog's opinion or a Yelp aggregate. It's a metro-wide title, and it landed on a restaurant sitting in West Dundee proper, not a suburb over.
A few minutes south in East Dundee, Tequila Val's is the newer name on the block, occupying the fully renovated former Anvil Club building, an address longtime residents will recognize even if the building's current life doesn't resemble its old one. The menu leans into lamb shank birria and quesabirrias alongside more familiar tacos and burritos, with a bar built around fresh margaritas and craft cocktails. It's a different kind of destination than Woodfire, but it sits close enough on the map that a Heritage Fest weekend or a fall trail ride can realistically include both.
The Season West Dundee Actually Runs On
Put it together and the shift isn't any single opening or anniversary. It's that a zoo that used to close for the season, a festival that used to fit in one plaza, and a restaurant scene split awkwardly across the river by town lines are now operating on the same weekends and, in the zoo's case, on a longer calendar than before. A resident who mentally filed Randall Oaks under "summer errand" and Heritage Fest under "downtown thing" is working from an outdated map. The current version of fall here is less about picking one event and more about recognizing that the pieces now sit close enough, and run long enough, to actually be strung into a single weekend.
That's the kind of shift that's easy to miss if you're not paying attention to how a place changes year over year, and it's exactly the kind of local detail that matters when you're thinking about where you want to plant yourself long term. If this stretch of the Fox River corridor has you thinking about your own next move, whether that's buying here, selling a home nearby, or just understanding what your property might be worth in today's market, Zamudio Realty Group knows this corridor block by block, in English and in Spanish. Get your free home valuation and let's talk about what's next.
