A Guide
A village of a few hundred people that used to be a spa town for thousands. Six minutes down the hill from us, and worth the whole drive on its own.
The Short Version
Sharon Springs sits in Schoharie County, in the Leatherstocking country of upstate New York. It is not on the way to anywhere. You come here on purpose, and that is most of what makes it good.
In the nineteenth century this was a serious destination. The mineral springs — sulphur, magnesia, chalybeate, and the one they called Blue Stone — drew people up from New York City by the trainload to take the waters. Grand hotels, bathhouses, a whole season. The village is on both the National Register of Historic Places and New York State's register as a historic spa village.
Then the fashion passed, as fashions do, and Sharon Springs spent most of a century very quiet. What is left is a Main Street of nineteenth-century buildings that never got knocked down, because nobody had the money to knock them down. That turns out to have been lucky.
What Brings People Now
The Mercantile on Main Street is the reason most first-time visitors have heard of Sharon Springs at all.
Founded by Josh Kilmer-Purcell and Brent Ridge. Housed in a historic storefront with the original floors — soap, skincare, goat milk products, homeware, and things made by people who live nearby. Eight minutes from us.
A restored nineteenth-century inn with a pub that gets lively at weekends and a restaurant doing generous American cooking. Worth booking a table rather than chancing it.
The mineral waters that built the place. Sulphur, magnesia, chalybeate, Blue Stone. The village's whole reason for existing, and still the strangest thing about it.
Eating
Between Main Street and a short drive you have 204 Main Bar & Bistro, the Black Cat Café, Sharon Tavern, The Rose & Kettle, and the Tryon Inn with its Backdoor Bar. Cobleskill and Cooperstown widen the choice considerably if you want a bigger night out.
The shops are the same story — small, specific, and run by people who are there. McGillycuddy's soap, the Emporium, a chocolatier, a cupcake place. You can walk the whole of Main Street in ten minutes and lose an afternoon doing it.
September 19 and 20, 2026. Live music, food trucks, workshops, the whole village out on the street. It is two miles from our driveway and the best weekend of the year to be here. Book early — everything in the area fills.
Getting Around
Everything below is measured from our driveway, not from the village.
You will want a car. There is no way around that, and honestly the driving is half the pleasure once you are off the interstate.
Where We Fit
Sharon Springs Vista Retreat sits at twelve hundred feet on twenty-six and a half acres, facing due north across the Mohawk Valley to the Adirondacks.
You can be in the village in six minutes for dinner and back up here in six for the fire. That is the whole argument for staying outside town rather than in it — you get the village when you want it and complete quiet when you do not.
Sleeps eight. Private sauna, outdoor cold plunge, fire ring, and twenty-six acres of your own.