Upstater

Hunter is home to the Catskill Mountain Foundation, an impressive arts collective that boasts performances spaces, an art collection, library, cinema, café and courses on sustainable living and literature. The Foundation is also home to the Steven E. Greenstein Piano Collection (where you can see 200-year-old piano tuning tools), which is available to view by appointment.

There’s some excellent eating to be done in Hunter, from pizza at Numero Uno to more swanky fare at the Bear Creek Restaurant and lots on Hunter Mountain itself, but we would be remiss if we didn’t mention  Maggie’s Krooked Cafe and Juice Bar in Tannersville. We made Tannersville our Town of the Week back in August, 2011.  But Maggie’s is something special and worth the hop over from Hunter. Maggie offers an extensive breakfast and lunch menu (very veggie friendly if you go easy on the flesh), as well as a bunch of fresh juices made fresh. Maggie herself will mostly be serving you one of her delicious menu offerings in her cozy dining room.

Greenstein Piano Collection

The Hunter-Tannserville-Haines Falls area is an outdoor lover’s paradise, from hiking up the Kaaterskill Falls trail to going swimming or canoeing a North-South Lake.

As far as living in Hunter goes, there’s a lot of real estate available, and, not surprisingly, plenty of rental options, plus condos and co-ops. Average house prices hover around $230,000, and the property taxes are relatively low; the median is around $1,200. Albany is northeast and about an hour away from Hunter, and if you head southeast, you’ll be in Ulster County and not far from Woodstock, Saugerties and Kingston. The Hunter-Tannersville Central School district ranks 359th out of 682 school districts in New York by school ranking site Schooldigger, which is not terribly impressive, frankly, but we’ve seen worse.  What’s interesting about the housing market in Hunter is that there are a couple of swanky gated communities, like Elka Park, where the estates can run into the millions and are situated on beautiful manicured grounds where members can visit the clubhouse to have cocktails.  But Hunter is quite affordable, as you will see from a couple of the properties we’re featuring on the blog this week, and there’s certainly more than enough acres to go around if you like your space.

Hunter is a bit dead in the summer, as you can probably imagine, but we don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, especially if you don’t like having to fight tourists just to get groceries or pick up the mail.  Most of the hustle and bustle in the village proper comes during the colder months, when the skiers and snowboarders come down off the mountain in search of non-slope-related fun.  But Hunter does experience some foot traffic during the other months from hikers, hunters and campers from North-South Lake and surrounding trails and parks.

And, of course, Hunter is the home of Hunter Mountain, one of the best winter sports destinations in the Northeast. Even if you’re not a big skier, Hunter Mountain offers snowtubing, as well as ziplining and canopy tours when the weather is warmer.  Hunter Mountain also offers wedding, conference and private group event packages. 

We think Hunter’s is a pretty cool little village, even if it is quiet, and there are some beautiful, affordable houses for sale in the area.  It’s worth checking out if you’re looking for a bucolic upstate New York abode with plenty to do outside. GMAP

About Kandy Harris

Kandy is a writer and musician/music teacher living in Saugerties, NY.

Read more from Kandy Harris