Town of the Week: White Lake (and Environs)

  |  November 26, 2012

Flickr/Photo by Steve Guttman NYC, Creative Commons license

We started the week thinking about White Lake, an unassuming Sullivan County spot along Route 17B with a couple of restaurants and inns. But it’s hard to look at White Lake alone, when it’s an unincorporated hamlet within the town of Bethel, which, as our regular readers know, is the original site of Woodstock and thus has many interesting offerings…although no real town of its own. And at the other end of the Lake known as White is the little town of  Kauneonga Lake, which has a post office and a bakery and a restaurant and a bungalow colony, and thus has its own draws.

It’s also right next to Smallwood, a formerly Christian community of tiny wooden houses and leafy streets, and down the street from a number of Orthodox bungalow colonies — an interesting mix of modest summer homes and luxury gated community (Chapin Estate), and then a few modern country homes amid the mix. The average listing priced hovered around $460,000 at the time of this writing, though there are many options in the $200,000 range.

Should you wish to fly in, the Sullivan County airport is but a hop from the whole area, or the Short Line bus takes you to Monticello, or to concerts at Bethel Woods. It’s about 100 miles from the city, or two hours in a mythical, traffic-free world. Schools?

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