Dear America: Richmondville’s love letter to America on its (our) 250th.

Richmondville Days rolls out the red, white, and blue. Dancing, parades, Scouts, St. Paul’s pie sale, kids’ games and fireworks, show off the best of smalltown America.

Patriots Randy Crapser and Steven Palmer came dressed to impress atop the Bank of Richmondville’s Richmondville Days float.

If you could bring the best of smalltown America together in one place for a long weekend of food (funnel cake and BBQ chicken), fun (a dunking booth manned by the local High School’s sports teams), church services (and sales), and fireworks, all with the theme Let Freedom Ring, what would it look like?

Probably a lot like Richmondville Days…

Friday night line dancing at the fire house? Where else but Richmondville.

…a Main Street celebration that shuts down the road to traffic for a parade packed with fire trucks, church floats, Little Leaguers, kids tossing candy, and for 2026’s festivities (no one can quite remember how long Richmondville Days has been going on, but the short answer is decades), Uncle Sam, Lady Liberty, and the bank president (he’s a hometown boy and former football star) in a powdered wig.

Richmondville's always been a place where connection and history matter and that first weekend in June? Well, locals know you better get there early. 

Well before the parade’s kickoff (10am and don’t be late), hundreds (thousands?) claimed their spots along Main Street. (Best place to grab whatever the weather? The front steps of the Bank of Richmondville if you’re after comfort; under the umbrellas at The Broken Spoke if you’re looking for something else. IYKYK.)

After that, it’s onto the Radez Elementary Gym, packed with wall-to-wall tables selling 3-D Prints, Magnets and More, Critter Clips, Oh Sugar! Scrubs and so much more designed and marketed by the l entrepreneurs of TREP$, an after-school program where kids learn the skills they need to start their own business.

Richmondville’s First Lady Marie Loder talks with a friend outside St. Paul’s Church.

What else? Line dancing at the firehouse and sunrise yoga. Ecumenical church services. Fireworks. Tours of the historic Bunn Mill. A pancake breakfast to benefit the Fire Department. An ice cream social. Old cars, fancy dresses, American flags and 250th banners, a majorette, Wes Laraway’s Wildlife Rescues… 

Volunteers begin pulling it all together in January and it all pays off rain (remember 2025’s Richmondville Days? We’re still drying out) or shine. 

Smalltown America at its best, going back more than 250 years to 1764 when Richmondville (originally part of the Town of Cobleskill, and in 1881, the last town in Schoharie County to be incorporated) welcomed its first settlers.

Town Historian Susan Rightmyer (she marched as Betsy Ross) has been putting together a comprehensive list of the town’s historical markers, at last count, more than a dozen.

Among them:

Richmondville’s Municipal Building remembers favorite son, the late Mayor Kevin Neary.

John Richmond Home–Bear Gulf Road~John Westover Home–Brooker Hollow Road~Asa Bailey–intersection Mill Street and Winters Drive~Grist Mill/James Foster–end of Holmes Street~Log Cabin Schoolhouse, Summit Street~Corporal James Tanner–intersection Route 7 and West Richmondville Road~Battle of Cobleskill–Route 7 near the Cobleskill-Richmondville High School~Nicholas Warner–Route 7, Warnerville~site of Seminary–Route 7, Warnerville~site of Seminary, Main Street, west of Methodist Church~first Post Office/Dox Tavern–corner Main and Summit Streets~site of covered bridge–Route 7, near Beards Hollow Road~Dr. Carolyn Olendorf, near Richmondville Rural Cemetery~Bear Gulch Creek/Mills–High Street, near the Bunn Mill~ Deputy Sheriff Veley, at cemetery, off Route 7, west of Curtis Lumber~George Warner/Cemetery, Warnerville Cutoff~ Route 10, near Cobleskill Town line–Cherry Valley Junction Railroad.

What else? 

Like most of Schoharie County, in Richmondville, it’s all within reach: Albany International Airport and Amtrak stations are less than an hour away; NYC and Boston, a little more than 3.

Radez Elementary (grades 2-5 and 339-ish kids) is part of the 1,500 Bulldogs strong K-12 Cobleskill-Richmondville school district.

There’s a pool, active churches, a fire department and rescue squad, Cobleskill Creek Trail, a gym, and with a population of 858 (according to 2020’s Census numbers)...a place for everyone…