Murrysville's Fall Runs on Two Different Clocks

"I grew up in Mt. Pleasant, and my family and friends would come to Murrysville often for dinner." That's how restaurateur Ron Sofranko explained, in an interview with TribLive, why he picked William Penn Highway for the third and largest location of his Neapolitan pizza brand, Pizzaiolo Primo. He wasn't describing a market he'd studied on a spreadsheet. He was describing a habit his own family already had, decades before he owned the building.

That detail matters more than it looks. Murrysville's fall calendar this year is really two separate stories running on two very different timelines, and they happen to be overlapping right now. One story started in March. The other started before most of the people reading this were born.

Pizzaiolo Primo's First Fall Season

Pizzaiolo Primo opened on William Penn Highway on March 18, 2026, in the building that used to hold an Atria's, which closed in July 2025. Sofranko had already built the Market Square location in Pittsburgh (acquired in 2021, after the original owner closed during the pandemic) and a second outpost in South Fayette's Piazza development in 2023. Murrysville is the largest of the three, and it's the only one running with a full liquor license.

The kitchen leans on one detail hard: the wood-fired oven was shipped over from Italy specifically for this build-out, and lead pizzaiolo Justin Giammario has been sliding pies into it since opening week. Sofranko has said the whole point of the concept is to skip the walk-in freezer entirely and make everything the same day it's served.

The restaurant is now in its first fall season.

The Farm That's Never Needed a Grand Opening

A few miles away on Saltsburg Road, Gearhard Farms is doing something it has done every autumn since 2000. This is the maze's 27th season. The land itself has been in the same family for more than 250 years, long enough that the property carries a Bicentennial Farm designation, the kind of recognition that predates most of the housing built around it.

The maze changes its theme and its "mystery aerial message" every year, and the farm still runs on the same modest weekend schedule it always has: closed Monday through Thursday, open Friday 5 to 9 p.m., Saturday noon to 9 p.m., and Sunday noon to 7 p.m., weekends from Labor Day through Halloween. There's no press release when the maze opens. There doesn't need to be. The people who go every year already know the schedule better than any calendar app could tell them.

The restaurant is a new arrival; the farm's roots in this community stretch back generations.

The Six Weeks Where Both Are Running at Once

Here's the actual point. Right now, for about six weeks, Murrysville has both timelines running simultaneously. A restaurant in its first fall season is open along the same road that leads out to a maze in its 27th year. That's not a coincidence of geography. It's what happens in a town that keeps attracting the newest version of something (Sofranko's biggest restaurant yet) without losing the oldest version of something else (a farm that predates the country).

The overlap extends past food. Duff Park, the 220-acre stretch managed by the municipality with help from the Murrysville Trail Alliance and the Friends of Murrysville Parks, has its own version of this same split. The flat 1.5-mile Funk Bikeway along Turtle Creek is the newer, easier addition, built for strollers and casual riders. The Forbes and Sumac trails that climb out of it are older, steeper, and rooted in the original hillside terrain. Regular hikers on AllTrails point to the Grand Loop, which connects Duff Park to Pleasant Valley Park through a stand of old-growth oak, maple, and hickory, as one of the better places in town to watch the leaves actually turn. It's the same pattern again: an easy, modern route sitting right next to a much older one that hasn't changed in the ways that matter.

And then there's the municipality's own fall programming, which is smaller in scale but tells the same story. Murrysville Parks and Recreation is running its Fall "Focus" Story Hike series at Bear Hollow Park this year, with remaining Sunday sessions on September 27 and October 11, aimed at kids ages 1 and a half to 10, led by instructor Lauren Menzietti, priced at $20 individually. It's a new offering layered onto a park that's been there for years, the same overlap in miniature.

What's Actually Open Right Now

If you're trying to figure out what to actually do with the next six weeks, here's what's running at the same time:

• Pizzaiolo Primo – 4869 William Penn Highway, dinner service with a full bar, open since March 2026
• Gearhard Farms corn maze and pumpkin patch – 5909 Saltsburg Road, weekends Labor Day through Halloween, Friday 5-9 p.m., Saturday noon-9 p.m., Sunday noon-7 p.m.
• Duff Park's Grand Loop and Funk Bikeway – accessible from the east entrance near Sheetz on Route 22, open year-round, best leaf color typically hits in the coming weeks
• Bear Hollow Park Fall "Focus" Story Hike – Sundays, September 27 and October 11, 2 to 3 p.m.

None of these are new discoveries. Most Murrysville residents already know Duff Park and have probably heard about the maze since they were kids themselves. What's worth noticing is that this particular six-week window is when the newest thing in town (a restaurant importing an oven from Italy) and the oldest thing in town (a corn maze that started before smartphones existed) are both open for business at the same time. That's not true every season. It's true right now.

Whether you end up at a table at Pizzaiolo Primo before or after getting turned around in a cornfield on Saltsburg Road, that's a fairly good problem to have. If you're ever curious about what else is shifting around town, from new construction to what's actually selling on your street, I'm always glad to talk shop alongside the restaurant recommendations. Elizabeth Bires — Let's Connect.