Meet Barry Brown, Silver Dollar City's Master Pumpkin Carver

Although Barry Brown spends most of the year at his home in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, visitors to Silver Dollar City can spot him throughout the fall at the park’s Harvest Festival, where he shows off his craft as the Master Pumpkin Carver. He does daily carving demonstrations and takes commissions from guests—and his hands are responsible for carving 500 of the more than 1,300 carved foam pumpkins that decorate every street of Silver Dollar City (alongside 20,000 fresh pumpkins).

It’s a gig he’s had since before the park’s Harvest Festival began, when the Silver Dollar City team brought him in to visit the park. He was charmed by the forest setting, the focus on craftsmanship and the company’s values. Brown said he thought he could carve 100 pumpkins that summer in preparation for the first Harvest Festival. Silver Dollar’s crew countered: Could he do 500?

“Five hundred!” Brown says. “I was cookin’, man.” They arrived at his Colorado home on pallets, and he got every single one carved just in time for the festival debut.

When Brown approaches a new pumpkin, he doesn’t necessarily have a design in mind. He lets the pumpkin guide him, observing the shape, the curve of the stem, the personality. “The very first pumpkin I carved was at about 10 with my mom’s paring knife,” he says. “I made paper decorations for it. I looked at it, contemplated it and thought, ‘What are you? What do you want to say?’ I ended up carving a half-moon with a face on it.” Sometimes, he asks guests what designs they have in mind. Once, that led to him carving “Will you marry me?” on a pumpkin that became the centerpiece of a proposal.

Brown loves to talk about the light that shines from inside a jack-o’-lantern. When you’re carving, he says, you have to hold your judgment until the light comes on, even if (or especially if!) you think your carving skills aren’t quite up to snuff. “The light changes so much,” he says. “It’s a great metaphor for the light inside of us. When the light shines out of us through kindness, gentleness, care and helpfulness, it changes things. It changes us. It’s transformative.”