Bloomville, New York has a population you could fit into a single subway car, and somehow that’s exactly what’s making this speck of a Catskills hamlet one of upstate’s most interesting little pockets right now.
The 2020 census counted just 173 people living in Bloomville, tucked inside the town of Kortright in Delaware County.
That number has actually been climbing fast since, with recent estimates putting the population closer to 289, a jump of roughly 40 percent in just a few years.
For a hamlet this size, that’s a real signal something is pulling people in.
Here’s what’s actually drawing the crowds, from the tiny grocery store turning heads nationally to the design-forward cabin worth booking a whole weekend around.
The store putting Bloomville on the map
The town’s biggest claim to fame these days is First Bloom, the corner store Alison Roman opened inside an 1860s home, stocked with the kind of curated pantry goods and small-batch groceries that turned a random hamlet into an actual reason to drive three hours north.
The Washington Post has since written about it, framing it as something of an ode to small-town charm, which is a lot of attention for a store in a town most people couldn’t have pointed to on a map a few years ago.
The reason to actually stay overnight
A quick grocery stop is one thing, but Bloomville also happens to be home to one of the more striking design-led cabins in the entire Catskills right now.
Fern Forest sits on 12 private acres just outside town, and its whole identity revolves around a dramatic wall of floor-to-ceiling triangular windows that frame nothing but trees.
Originally built in the 1980s, the cabin was fully refurbished in 2025, and the owner, who renovated the place herself while living in Tulum, Mexico, said she’d never seen windows quite like them before.
She’s also completely obsessed with natural light, and it shows the second you walk in, since the design makes guests feel “genuinely submerged in the forest.”
Inside, the interiors lean Scandinavian, with soaring ceilings and a restrained material palette that keeps the forest doing all the visual work rather than fighting it for attention.
There’s a huge soaking tub, a cozy TV snug for lazy afternoons, a fully equipped kitchen, and fast Wi-Fi if you’re the type who can’t fully disconnect. The deck is elevated and floats above the ground, accessed through sliding glass doors, so guests end up sitting among the treetops instead of below them.
A private trail runs straight off the deck, cutting through mature maples and a carpet of ferns before ending at a hidden fire pit tucked beneath the trees.
A newly built Scandinavian sauna nestled among the pines rounds out what’s basically a self-contained wellness retreat, one where you genuinely never have to leave the property if you don’t want to.
A cabin with a pedigree
The owners behind Fern Forest aren’t new to this either.
Their previous project, Huska Creek Cabin, was previously featured by the New York Times, Curbed, and Cabin Porn, the design blog whose entire cult following is built around exactly this kind of architecture.
Fern Forest was built specifically to push that same formula further, leaning even harder into privacy, natural light, and total immersion in the landscape.
Worth knowing before you go
Bloomville sits in Delaware County, roughly three hours from New York City, making it a genuinely doable weekend trip rather than a full expedition.
The most straightforward route takes the New York State Thruway (I-87) north, then cuts west onto Route 28 through the heart of the Catskills before connecting to smaller local roads into Kortright and Bloomville itself.
If you’d rather skip the highway grind, Route 17 west through Sullivan County is a scenic alternative, though it tends to add a bit more time depending on traffic through the mountain towns.
The cabin itself sleeps up to four guests across two bedrooms, with A/C and a full kitchen for anyone who wants to actually cook a meal rather than rely on takeout the whole trip.
Fern Forest can be booked directly through its online website or via Airbnb, and reservations tend to move quickly given how design-forward the space is.