Massive crowds flocked to Jim Thorpe this weekend during the third week of the town’s annual Fall Foliage Festival.

One of the top area attractions, the Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway rides, added a 6 p.m. trip Saturday in an effort to accommodate visitors. Despite selling over 4,000 tickets, the attraction still had to turn some customers away.

Jim Thorpe Tourism Agency President Michael Rivkin, in a social media post Saturday night, said while he dislikes the phrase, “I’ve never seen anything like it before,” it certainly fit the scene.

“Lines for the train wrapped from the ticket booth far to the right, blocking the entry to the Visitor Center, and so far to the left as to cross over the entrance to the county parking lot,” Rivkin said. “(Saturday) was very heavy all day for our downtown businesses and even our experienced food vendors at Josiah White Park ran out early. Such was the demand.”

Jim Thorpe leaders have worked hard to get a better handle on festival crowds over the past few years, holding event-planning meetings involving local police, county officials, the Pocono Mountain Visitors Bureau and more, throughout the year.

“Everyone tasked with organizing and managing the festival was working their butts off to do the best under the situation,” Rivkin said. “The sheer massive volume was the culprit.”

Jim Thorpe Police Chief Joe Schatz said downtown crowds were undoubtedly at record levels Saturday.

“We’ve come up with a lot of new traffic patterns and different ways of doing things, but you can never really gear up for exactly how much traffic you’ll have on a given weekend. The weather was nice and the amount of traffic downtown was immense.”

Adjustments are already in the works, Schatz said, for next weekend, particularly when it comes to the residential areas of the Heights and the east side of town.

“Those residential areas get slammed, and we did tow some vehicles that were parked illegally there, but we’re going to look at modifications in our yellow zones to post them no parking,” he said. “Then in the offseason, we’ll look again at how we can help our residents.”

Many festival attendees shared their thoughts on both the event and the crowds via social media. Tanya Daniels, who said she’s been coming to the festival for around five years, said there is no doubt crowds were at a peak level Saturday.

“I’ve never seen it this full,” she said. “That didn’t stop us from enjoying anything. The shops were beautiful and the music was great.”

Sean McGeehan, who performed during the festival, noted the lines that were forming early along Broadway on Saturday.

“Crowds are massive,” he said. “It’s the season. Fall foliage.”

Traffic, which is tricky under normal circumstances, was complicated by the Pennsylvania Turnpike closure between the Lehigh Valley and Mahoning Valley interchanges over the weekend.

“What the closure did was send folks to the surface streets of our neighboring towns,” Rivkin said. “Routes 248 and 145 coming from Allentown were extremely heavy, spilling onto roads from Slatington and Walnutport to Weissport and Lehighton. Needless to say, all roads in Jim Thorpe were clogged for most of the day. We’ll hear a lot about traffic, and we should know that from fire police to Jim Thorpe police to Chief Joe Schatz, who manually managed the traffic light all day, all hands were on deck. But, at some point, the volume of visitors just exceeds the best laid plans.”

The festival continues in downtown Jim Thorpe on Saturday and Sunday.