Corn mazes near El Cajon, CA

Summers Past Farms

A herb farm, nursery and gift shop in the East County foothills at Flinn Springs, and the closest of these to El Cajon. Every October it turns its field over to pick-your-own pumpkins, and the corn maze is deliberately small: it is cut for young children to run through rather than to get properly lost in, with a hay fort beside it. Admission is free, so it is the low-commitment option if you want an hour of pumpkin-patch atmosphere rather than a paid day out. The trade-off is scale, and the farm is closed on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays for much of the year.

Mountain Valley Ranch

A working ranch on Highway 78 in Ramona that has run a pumpkin patch every autumn for nearly thirty years, and the nearest thing to a proper farm maze in the eastern half of the county. The corn maze is two acres and hand-planted, and it shares the field with a corn cannon, a petting zoo, pony rides and weekend hayrides. Getting in is free and the activities are pay-as-you-go, which makes it easy to keep a visit short. The one gap is that the ranch does not publish what the maze itself costs, so take cash and expect a few dollars a head.

Bonita Pumpkin Farm

One of the two real farm sites Pumpkin Station runs in San Diego County, on the corner of Sweetwater and Bonita Road in the South Bay. It is a living pumpkin field rather than a lot full of trucked-in pumpkins, with a corn maze grown eight feet tall, sunflower rows you can cut from, a tractor hay-wagon, a train ride and a petting zoo. Parking and entry are free and each attraction is a five-dollar ticket, so a family can spend as little or as much as it likes. It is the easiest of these to reach if you are coming from the south or west rather than out of East County.

Rancho Bernardo Pumpkin Farm

Pumpkin Station's North County farm, off Highland Valley Road just east of the I-15, and the one most locals mean when they say Rancho Bernardo pumpkin patch. The eight-foot corn maze sits next to sunflower fields that bloom through October, and the hay-wagon ride runs out through the family's Christmas tree fields. Entry and parking are free with five-dollar tickets per attraction, and the maze closes at 6pm even when the patch stays open later, because there is no light in the field. Worth knowing that it is a fair drive north from El Cajon, up the 67 or the 15.

Carlsbad Strawberry Company Pumpkin Patch

The strawberry farm beside Agua Hedionda Lagoon becomes a full fall festival from mid-September, and its corn maze is the longest on this list at a mile and a half of trail. It is the only one here with a haunted night maze as well, run with the lagoon foundation on Friday and Saturday evenings in October and aimed squarely at teenagers and adults rather than small children. The catch is that it is also the most expensive way in: admission is charged per person and the maze, the tractor ride and the animals are all extra on top. It runs the longest season of the six, into early November.

Big Horse Corn Maze

The furthest of these and the biggest by a wide margin: eleven-plus acres cut into the field behind Big Horse Feed & Mercantile on Temecula Parkway, which the Temecula tourism board calls the largest corn maze in Southern California. It is the answer San Diegans give each other when someone asks where a serious maze is, and the one worth the hour in the car if the maze itself is the point rather than the pumpkins. Entry is a single per-person price that covers the maze, the jumpers and the rest of the harvest festival, and it is dearer after 5pm. One caveat: when this page was researched in early September 2026 the farm's own website was offline and it had not posted its 2026 dates, so check before driving up.