Sharon Springs Still Feels Like a Mineral-Spa Village

Sharon Springs is the kind of small village where the name still does real work. Old Stone Fort Museum says the village came together in 1871 from Rockville on present-day Route 20 and the summer resort around the mineral springs below. Within a short distance, it lists a sulfur spring, two magnesia springs, a chalybeate iron spring, and a blue stone spring.

That helps explain why Main Street feels a little more dramatic than a casual drive-by suggests. The state DRI application describes Sharon Springs as a Schoharie County village shaped by mineral waters, late-19th and early-20th-century visitors, old hotels, bathhouses, and renewed downtown investment. It names the American Hotel, Roseboro Hotel, Adler Hotel, Imperial Bathhouse, Klinkhart Hall, and Beekman 1802 as pieces of that story.

The Imperial Bathhouse gives the spa era some theater, with double Corinthian columns and a Beaux-Arts entrance. The old resort buildings matter too: Old Stone Fort notes that the mineral springs area and surrounding resort hotels and rooming houses were placed on the National Register in 1994.

So Sharon Springs is more than quaint. It is a village with quiet hills, old resort bones, mineral-water lore, and a Main Street still trying to make good use of what earlier generations left behind.

That mix is what makes it fun to notice: a little Catskills-edge drama, a little Schoharie County practicality, and a downtown that remembers when people came for water, rest, and a bit of show.