Near the entrance to Skyline Drive and Shenandoah National Park, the unincorporated village of Sperryville, Va., attracts visionaries of all kind.
“I want locals to come in and know they are coming to a place that they can be happy. And I want tourists to come in and be jealous they don’t live here,” said one of those visionaries, Kerry Sutten. He owns Before & After, a cafe in the Sperryville Historic District, a section of the village that received a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
Cafe owner was a new title for Sutten, who worked for more than 20 years in the executive and legislative branches of the federal government. He’d been drawn to the area for decades to hike and purchased a weekend home in Sperryville in 2012.
As a gateway community to Shenandoah National Park, Sperryville will “always hopefully stay rural and country,” Sutten said. And with minimal light pollution, the area has some of the darkest skies on the East Coast.
“On any clear night, one might see shooting stars, even when there is not a meteor shower, and almost certainly the Milky Way,” said Hunt Harris, director of the Ragged Mountain Resource Center. Harris has led hundreds of walks — including moonlight hikes in Shenandoah National Park — that he said provide “magical experiences.”
On Sunday nights before he retired, Sutten didn’t want to return to his house on Capitol Hill, which he now rents out. “I realized this is where I wanted to retire.” But he needed a new venture, he said, or “I would just be bored out of my mind in retirement.” Sutten ran with an idea to open a cafe serving espresso and wine, inspired by those he visited during his 50th birthday trip to Italy in 2012.
Along with his niece, Jess, he bought and restored a building in foreclosure on Main Street, once that of another Sperryville visionary. Built in 1857, the property was owned by James Arthur Engham — a successful Black entrepreneur who worked as a barber, jeweler, farmer and dentist. “For over 100 years, this prominent building on Main Street was owned by an African American family. I think that’s a big deal [in the once segregated South],” Sutten said.
Before & After opened in 2015 and was largely operated by Sutten’s niece until he retired from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 2018 and moved to Sperryville full time. “Our goal was to create something that just didn’t exist out here and to make it a community spot,” he said. Today locals consider Before & After the “living room” of Sperryville.
Located 70 miles west of Washington in Rappahannock County, Va., Sperryville was established in 1820 along the Thornton River. Histories from the Rappahannock Historical Society indicate multiple generations of the Thornton family, beginning with William Thornton Sr., who emigrated from England in the 1640s, acquired and mapped thousands of acres in and around Rappahannock County, including what is now Sperryville.
Residents say the village has retained its historical charm but grown to include unique locally owned businesses, like the 20-seat Three Blacksmith’s restaurant that critics praise and diners book six months in advance.
SperryFest — an annual festival and rubber duck race down the Thornton River — and support from the nonprofit Sperryville Community Alliance, run by Sutten, raised funds for a trail through the village that connects some of the local businesses.
In 2019, property owners along the river, including Sutten, cleared a path for the Sperryville Trail Network. Walkers can embark on the trail behind Sutten’s cafe, stop at the River District east of downtown between two forks of the Thornton River and continue to Pen Druid Fermentation. There also are efforts underway to expand the Sperryville Historic District to include the River District, where a once-prized apple packing complex now houses quaint shops, including Copper Fox Antiques and Copper Fox Distillery.
Other trail property owners — including Cheri Woodard of Cheri Woodard Realty, and Sherri Fickel and Kevin Kraditor, owners of Hopkins Ordinary Bed & Breakfast + Ale Works — similarly came to Sperryville first to enjoy nature, and then to create.
A self-proclaimed “serial entrepreneur,” Woodard has owned an herb and antique shop, a catalogue retailer, an art gallery and, now, a real estate company on Main Street. “There are many people that count Sperryville as their home, but only about 300 people actually live in the village itself,” said Woodard, who lives on a farm with a view of Old Rag Mountain and “miles and miles of open green forest that’s protected forever.”
Avid hikers turned bed-and-breakfast owners, Fickel and Kraditor bought their inn, built around 1820, in 2001 — one of only three businesses on Main Street at that time, Fickel said. “Then people came like we did, and said, ‘I like the feel of this place, and I have an idea,’ and we were all very supportive.”
Sperryville attracts people who “want to be closer to nature, to use what is local, to create art, food, beautiful medicinal products, jewelry, anything like that,” said Lauren Kyser, manager of Wild Roots Apothecary, who lives in Amissville, Va., about 16 miles away.
Living there: As of Oct. 24, there were three residential listings in Sperryville’s 22740 Zip code, Woodard said. The residential listings include a three-bedroom, one-bathroom house on a half acre priced at $429,000 and a four-bedroom, five-bathroom house on 51 acres listed at $3.9 million.
Schools: Rappahannock County Elementary, Rappahannock County High School.
Transit: Sperryville has convenient access to U.S. 211 (Lee Highway) and U.S. 522 (Sperryville Pike). Dulles International Airport is 60 miles away.
