travel – Bill Burk’s collective writing…and some other stuff.

ICE ICE BABY

Do a quick thought experiment before reading on.
Make ice without electricity.

Of all the day-to-day comforts we take for granted, the human ability to create cold might be the most underrated (heat was a piece of cake). Refrigeration, other than via of evaporation and air movement, wasn’t invented until the 1830’s. It wasn’t perfected for another century. There is no reliable data that recorded how many refrigerators were in United States homes prior to 1940, but it wasn’t many (by 1944 they were in about half the households).

If you wanted something cold, it meant ice.

Ice harvest on Chautauqua Lake was a boom business from the 1880’s through the 1910’s; twenty to forty-thousand tons removed from the lake yearly and shipped to ice houses, mostly in Pittsburgh, but west to Cleveland and east to Buffalo as well. Ice was a regional industry that moved tens of thousands of tons of product and employed entire work forces through long winters.

Chautauqua Lake has a low shoreline, easily accessible. The upper basin has a depth best for growing ice. By late January every year crews lay out a cutting schedule, dividing the ice into a grid of blocks twenty-two by thirty-two inches, with a depth of twelve to eighteen inches. Blocks weigh between a hundred-fifty and three-hundred pounds. Giant saws cut up the grids and horse-drawn sleds pull the ice onto shore. Ice is loaded onto wagons and transferred to train stations. The blocks are standardized to maximize storage. A single railcar can carry thirty to forty tons of tightly packed ice, and during the busiest weeks, multiple cars depart daily for industrial centers. Ice from Chautauqua Lake is known throughout the east for its clarity and slow melt rate, qualities that reduce losses during transport and increase its commercial value. A block of Chautauqua ice can last ten to twelve months if stored correctly.

The Celoron Ice Company and facilities in Mayville maintained storage capacity for more than ten-thousand tons, not simply stacks of frozen water, but inventory, revenue, and the wages of hundreds of workers. Families depended on the harvest to bridge the financial gap between fall and spring.

But the industry operated on narrow margins, dependent on the weather. A solid freeze determined whether a year would be profitable. Mild winters, or untimely thaws, could ruin an entire harvest season, which trickled down to all the industry that counted on ice, including service to individual homes. This ice had to last until the next freeze and provide winter wages for ice workers, wages that were comparatively strong for the era—often $1.50 to $2.00 per day when factory work paid closer to $1.00.

Icehouses were feats of practical engineering. The Celoron structure was a massive wooden complex along the shoreline, insulated heavily with sawdust (sawdust was the perfect insulation, a limited conductor of heat, and cheap), it could preserve ice into September. Storage capacity was precise, every cubic foot represented potential income. A fully stocked icehouse could hold a value equivalent to hundreds of thousands of dollars in today’s dollars.

Before rail expansion, natural ice rarely traveled far from its source. Afterward, it became a critical component of food distribution, brewing, and industrial cooling across multiple states. Thousands of tons left the Chautauqua Lake with breweries among the largest consumers.

By the 1920s mechanical refrigeration technology began to offset the ice industry. Prices for natural ice, once $4 to $6 per ton, fell to $1. Profit margins collapsed. Icehouses that had operated for decades closed, buildings were dismantled, equipment was sold for scrap, and workers moved into factories, railroads, and other emerging industries. The transition happened quickly enough that many communities experienced it as a sudden end rather than a gradual decline. Chautauqua County was no exception, but in its halcyon days, frozen water from the lake was a major local business.

ELKO AND THE KINZUA DAM PROJECT

PART II

The Erasure of The Town of Elko, Cattaraugus County

They stood to the side, each waiting his turn in this muddy, rainy, sad place. They shook their heads absently, involuntarily, in mute objection, careful not to make eye contact with the others loitering at the rusted cast-iron fence encircling the graveyard. They stood in quiet witness as their ancestors were exhumed, loaded onto a truck, and swept from their not-so-final-after-all resting place. There was a hum of sadness, dampened by helplessness, fury, and simple confusion.

Eminent Domain. It’s an unapologetic, legally convenient sledgehammer. It’s a piece of paper that’s handed to you, at your front door, from an official in a sharp suit, white collar, and soft hat. It’s a thief in the night. A cudgel. It’s a bulldozer ripping up your house, your white picket fence, your vegetable garden, and your heart.

It’s what you get when you’re in the way.

A Citizen of The Allegheny Valley Confronts a Kinzua Dam Project Worker

The Allegheny River valley had been inhabited for centuries by the Seneca Indians, then European settlers. It was a rural oasis filled with orchards, hunting grounds, fishing spots, family farms, small towns with hardware stores and churches. Then the Kinzua Dam was built, the water rose, and those places were entombed beneath a lake. The local knowledge disappeared; a populated landscape became a memory.

Before the flooding began, the Army Corps of Engineers conducted surveys to locate every known cemetery and individual grave that would be destroyed when the dam went into operation. They worked with non-native families, churches, and the Seneca Nation to identify descendants and next of kin. Grave markers were cataloged, photographed, and mapped. Headstones were moved when possible; otherwise, new markers were provided.

Licensed funeral directors and contracted crews carried out the mass disinterment. Remains were placed in new caskets or containers to be moved. Personal items buried with individuals were reinterred unless families requested otherwise. Families were given the option to choose a new burial location if they wished.

What else were they supposed to do?

Public memory focuses on the Seneca displacement and their fight with the government for the right to keep their land above water, all the way to the Supreme Court. They appealed directly to President Kennedy.

But a dam doesn’t discriminate. The non-natives, citizens of Elko, Kinzua, and Morrison, had no ground to stand on when the government came calling with their pieces of paper, no one advocated for them, no treaty protected their rights to keep their land, to leave their people buried in the place they wanted. The Kinzua project drowned a valley that had sustained people for generations. It demonstrated how easily federal priorities, in this case Cold War flood control, could override local lives.

Public Outcry over the Controversial Construction of The Kinzua Dam

Elko residents in particular suffered. The town was declared uninhabitable by decree, its government dissolved. Property deeds were voided. Houses were condemned, bought out, or bulldozed. People who had expected to pass their land to their children instead watched surveyors mark it for destruction. Entire neighborhoods were boxed up and scattered across Cattaraugus County and beyond. Even the name Elko was removed from maps, as if it had never existed.

This is not a tale from early American homesteaders. It happened in 1960. It happened in Cattaraugus Conty. It happened to people our parents and grandparents might have known. It happened to roads in Elko that led to and from the post office, the grocery store. To neighborhoods that hosted block parties and garage sales, to church picnics, to BINGO, to the park with its gazebo and summer bands and ice cream. To roads that brought Christmas carolers, where you walked your dog, strolled under streetlamps and caught fireflies.

By 1965 all those roads ended in water.

Forever Ain’t What it Used to Be. George Washington and The Kinzua Dam

The Senecas hold a Day Of Remembrance every year to honor the spirits of those who passed during that time, and to make sure that such a tragedy never happens again.

The non-natives of the Allegheny Valley hold no such ceremony.

The Chautauqua Gorge

If you live in the west part of the county, you’re undoubtedly familiar with the Chautauqua Gorge. It’s 538 acres of state land, easily accessible from launch points from Mayville to Westfield.

For most of the other points of the compass, that natural geological Western New York wonder contains a bit of a mystery. It’s a striking natural feature that has captured the attention of geologists, hikers, and nature lovers, with its rugged beauty, unique geological features, and tranquil atmosphere.

Chautauqua County has an exposed geological record dating back about 370 million years. Chautauqua Gorge is a product of millions of years of geological activity, most of the architecture coming from the forces of glaciation and erosion, continuously sculpted by the flowing waters of Chautauqua Creek, which isn’t done with the mosaic; that estuary continues to erode the underlying layers of sedimentary rock (shale, sandstone, and limestone). These rock deposits were layered in ancient seas over. You can see the 350-million-year history of the area in exposed rock layers, earth’s geological history mapped before your eyes, millennia of erosion, water flow, and natural weathering. It’s a valuable and unique classroom for geologists, offering insights into the region’s prehistoric past and the forces that shaped the Appalachian Plateau.

That geological history also informs an ecological treasure trove, a feature of the gorge. The gorge and the surrounding watershed support a cornucopia of flora and fauna. The cool, damp environment creates a microclimate that is ideal for several species of plants, including ferns, mosses, and wildflowers. The dense vegetation along the creek provides a rich habitat for wildlife, including deer, foxes, and a variety of bird species, from warblers to raptors (it’s a vital corridor for migratory species, providing shelter and food). The creek itself is home to various aquatic species, including brook trout, which thrive in the cold, clear waters. The biodiversity of the gorge adds to its ecological significance, making it a crucial area for conservation efforts.

The gorge is an amusement park for outdoor activities. A short trail leads to an impressive swimming hole, complete with waterfalls that cascade crystal clear (chilly!) water into collecting ponds, with fossils embedded in the shale that frame the creek. There are several trails winding through the gorge, offering varying levels of difficulty for both casual hikers and more seasoned adventurers. Trails are regularly maintained to reduce the impact of human activity on the environment. One of the most popular routes is the Chautauqua Gorge Trail, which follows the creek and provides stunning views of the cliffs and waterfalls.

The creek itself is a draw for anglers, especially those interested in fly fishing. The brook trout population makes Chautauqua Creek a prized fishing spot, particularly in the spring and fall when water levels are higher. In addition to fishing and hiking, visitors can enjoy picnicking, birdwatching, and photography. During the winter months, the gorge becomes a peaceful retreat for snowshoeing and cross-country skiing.

In addition to its recreational value, Chautauqua Gorge has significant educational and cultural importance. The area’s rich geological history makes it an excellent outdoor classroom for students and researchers studying earth sciences. Field trips to the gorge offer hands-on learning opportunities about rock formations, erosion, and watershed ecology. Educators from local schools and universities often bring students to the gorge to study its unique features and to observe the interactions between the natural environment and the wildlife that inhabits it.

Local environmental groups, in collaboration with state agencies, have taken steps to protect the gorge and its surrounding watershed. Efforts to maintain the health of the creek and prevent erosion are ongoing, with projects aimed at stabilizing the banks and removing invasive species that threaten native plants and wildlife.

The beauty and ecological significance of Chautauqua Gorge make conservation efforts essential for its preservation. Visitors to the gorge are encouraged to follow “Leave No Trace” principles, ensuring that the area remains pristine for future generations. By fostering a sense of environmental responsibility, conservation organizations hope to preserve the natural beauty of Chautauqua Gorge while allowing people to continue enjoying its many offerings.

The BLIZZARD Of 1977

A winter like the old days.

Lake Erie froze solid December 16^th, 1976. That’s early. It happens, earlier some years, but the lake almost always thaws after that at some point. We use Lake Erie’s surface status as a snowfall predictor. A solid Lake Erie usually means a milder winter; annual nor-eastern winds skim over the ice instead of pulling moisture and turning it into pregnant snow bands. A liquid Erie generates familiar snow bands and squalls, winters that turn a hundred inches of snow into two hundred.

In 1976 the lake froze and stayed that way, the traditional harbinger of relatively mild snowfall for counties bordering the great lake. The difference in ‘76 was an unusually heavy snowfall over the lake. Precipitation that would normally melt, accumulated on the lake’s surface, deep, wispy, light snow.

January of 1977 was the coldest month on record in Western New York to that date, averaging 13.8 °F. There was no melt, anywhere, and snowfall throughout the month, though not overwhelming, was steady. Bufalo had fifty-nine inches by the middle of January. There is no reported total snowfall for Jamestown, Dunkirk or Olean prior to the storm, but all three cities had over a hundred forty inches after the blizzard hit.

And the snow on Lake Erie was piled high…too high.

Thursday, January 27^th. An arctic front builds a wall of snow that passes through Indianapolis, then Columbus, Toledo and Cleveland, Ohio. By evening the wall arrives in Erie, Pennsylvania (Erie will report more than five hundred vehicles accidents that morning). Winds scoop up all that snow off Lake Erie and carry it east with the already-packed clouds. Thursday night winds hit forty-nine miles per hour, driving a once in a century blizzard toward Western, New York.

Friday, January 28^th. Witnesses describe what looks like a grey mist moving toward the southeastern cities bordering Lake Erie. Lightning flashes inside the maelstrom.

The mist turns into a menacing wall of white as it closes on the southern tier of New York, a blanket is thrown over the world. Visibility is nonexistent inside the white hurricane. The mass of snow from Lake Erie is dropped randomly all over Chautauqua, Cattaraugus, Erie, and Wyoming counties. By 1:00 pm snow begins to cover cars, first bumper high, then up to the windows. By evening drifts fifteen feet high are scattered throughout the region. The wind whips and shapes the snow without discrimination. Mounds of snow are picked up and randomly dropped, then moved again. A road that is bare one minute is impassable the next, shocking travelers with the arbitrary intensity.

Friday evening, winds gust to almost seventy miles per hour. Wind chills drop to sixty degrees below zero.By midnight, Buffalo, New York is crippled, an estimated two thousand cars are stranded on Main Street and about eight thousand on streets throughout the city. The south towns are frozen solid, covered in drifts.

Saturday, January 29^th. Visibility improves in the morning, and municipalities send their plows and emergency crews out to clean up and assess damage. Abandoned cars are a major impediment to the effort. In Buffalo, trucks and payloaders dump snow into the Niagara River. In the south towns of Chautauqua and Cattaraugus counties area roads have become wintry tunnels, and parking lots are filled with banks of snow removed from roads.

Sunday, January 30^th. The wind and snow subside, and the sun comes out briefly. Towns come alive. Major roads are cleared.

With the weather softening and single lanes on major roads clearing, people head out into the world, to run errands, to witness the marvels of the blizzard.

But the wind isn’t done with New York. At 3:00 pm, the wind increases and blowing snow once again turns visibility to nil. Driving becomes treacherous. Vehicles are stranded anew and abandoned cars block roads that had just been freed. A peak gust of 58 mph is recorded at the Buffalo airport. That night the wind chill falls to minus forty degrees.

Monday, January 31st. Most roads are closed by overnight snow. Fire departments spend time checking houses snow-covered to their roofs to make sure nobody is freezing or suffocating.

The blizzard has blown itself out. The effects of its carnage are just being realized.

Woodscape Art…Brilliance Wrapped in Legacy

He looked at the natural world differently than me and you, most probably, with an artist’s eye. You could tell then -if you saw him cruising the lake shoreline attuned to driftwood, touching trees for texture, skimming wood scraps of fallen lumber for the right shape, the perfect color or grain- that he sought something we didn’t see.

You can tell now by the collection of bark, pebbles, and myriad species of flora stored at the house of his protégé, Greg Wefing.

Cecil Rhodes has been gone for some eleven years now, passed away in 2013. He was a schoolteacher at Maple Grove High School, classically trained in industrial design at the Pratt Institute of Brooklyn, and at teaching at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. He was also a local legend and celebrated creator of what he called then, and Greg calls now, Woodscape art.

Woodscapes are crafted with different sizes and various species of wood sometimes enhanced with colored stains and paints. They are like three-dimensional paintings. Greg has a collection of his own work, and a few of Cecil’s pieces as well. A Woodscape of Wefing’s has hung the Bemus Village Hall for about thirty years.

Rhodes essentially invented the discipline of Woodscapes in the late 1970’s and early 80’s. He’d been employed in the garment district of New York City for eleven years, a teacher for five more at Maple Grove (his de facto alma mater, graduating from Bemus Point High School in 1950), and a boat repair specialist when he realized he had an aptitude for art, and that wood was his medium.

“Cecil created from his imagination, I think. He’d get an idea and be able to make a piece. I do mine from pictures I find, usually in calendars and magazines.” Wefing is standing in front of a pile of nature-art planners and mags on a workbench in his basement workshop. Lining the wall are shelves of wood strips and filings of various color and texture. “Something will kind of jump out at me, and I’ll have a new project.”

And then he goes to work, unearthing the raw material that will form his art. Greg is now the person you’ll find in the Bemus area combing the natural world for the right materials to fulfill a vision and build Woodscape art. “Yeah, I’m the guy you see cutting down tall grass or cattails on the side of the road. Or at the lake looking for driftwood, peeling bark off a tree,” he says.

The village of Bemus Point, when you drill down to the locals (that population that spends years in the same place, completing their routines, season after season) is character driven. Cecil Rhodes was semi-famous for his meticulous, detail-driven artwork. Wefing has followed a similar path, building a trove of bas relief art that’s impressive for its detailed craftsmanship and vision. “I worked for Cecil for two or three years while I went to art school,” he says. “Cecil worked mostly with wood tones. I started to add some color to mine. They’re a little different, but a lot of the same techniques, the same process.”

Wefing figures he could knock off a piece in a week if he put in the hours. But he does his art at his own pace. “I usually do about five a winter, down here in the studio, when the weather is bad. I’ve done commissioned work, but don’t really like it. I like to work at my own pace, on my own projects.” He says Cecil’s efforts to mainstream the art wasn’t as successful as his individual creations. “He was thinking we might mass produce some of his pieces, and I was going to be part of that. It never really worked out. His art was pretty special.”

Wefing isn’t really in it for the money (though he could be, his work is that good), but does sell his art, informally, and mostly from his Facebook home page.

CHAUTAUQUA BRIDGE

In October of 1982, 726 athletes lined up in Bemus Point with the goal of crossing the lake and back. The lake was much too cold for a swim. The Bemus Pint Ferry was not an option for a Fall 10K race. Fortunately, these runners had a fresh path, brand spanking new pavement, the Chautauqua County Veterans Memorial Bridge.

There was a time when getting from the southern part of Chautauqua Lake to the upper lake was a logistical chore, Mayville to Jamestown was a journey, more than a grocery run. Routes 394 and 430 wrapped the lake, picturesque to be sure, but cumbersome for anyone in a hurry. This was prior to 1982. A drive from Jamestown to Long Point State Park was a common trip, fifteen miles or so up the north side of the lake.

If you then wanted to tour the southwestern coast, Stowe, Chautauqua Institution, or points south, you had one of three options:

Circumnavigate the lake, back through Jamestown, or north around Mayville.
Drive into Bemus, hope to catch the ferry.
1. The ferry had to be running that day.
1. The ferry had to be on your side, ready to go to the other side.
1. You had to be the one of the first ten or so cars in line.

For an intrastate trip through New York, from the west to east you used the I-90 corridor along Lake Erie, all southern cities, Jamestown, Olean, Corning, and east, were accessible by backroads only. What is now Route I86 as a developed interstate highway wasn’t a priority because of that pesky lake blocking any straight run west to east.

That changed in 1982 with the building of the Chautauqua County Veterans Memorial Bridge.

That Fall 10K race in Bemus, launching the opening of the first non-stop vehicle option for getting from one side of the lake to the other, was forty-two years ago, a long time for a bridge. Now it’s in need of a facelift. Or in lieu of a cosmetic revival, some body work.

Enter New York State Department of Transportation and their checkbook.

The state has earmarked $78 million for renovations and structural work on the Chautauqua County Veteran’s Bridge. Another $4.7 million for the local success routes to the bridge off routes 430 and 394. Work began on the main part of the 3,790-foot main span last summer (2023). It’s expected to be completed fall of 2026.

New York State DOT Commissioner Marie Therese-Dominguez was in Chautauqua recently to oversee the start of the project. “It’s going to enhance safety, it’s going to ease travel and it going to extend the service life of these bridges by another 40 years,” she said.

The work being done probably won’t show itself to the casual observer -new bridge joints, fresh decks, bearings, and repaired steel. The roadway will be resurfaced. On and off ramps will have new barriers.

The noticeable part will be the closures and re-routing of traffic to get the job completed. The plan is to work one set of lanes at a time, and only close the entire bridge for short periods during nighttime. Local officials are of course asking people to be patient with the process and disruptions in traffic.

Commissioner Therese-Dominguez says, “It’s going to take a lot of patience but in the end, I think it’s going to be well worth it.”

Governor Hochul released a statement saying, “To ensure that our communities and our economy in all regions of the state continue to grow and prosper, New York state is making investments to strengthen and harden our infrastructure to meet and exceed the challenges of the 21st Century.”

State Sen. George Borrello, R-Irving, thanked Hochul for recognizing the importance of the bridge and the need to bolster the structure. “She is no stranger to Chautauqua County, no stranger to Chautauqua Lake and she knows the importance of it,” he said. “I want to truly thank her for investing in infrastructure around Chautauqua County, particular, this major, major investment in this bridge over Chautauqua Lake.”

Home of Lucy Hosts The Babe!

The little league baseball field at Celoron Park sits by the Chadakoin River that drains Chautauqua Lake on its southern end. Hit a baseball far enough into right field there and it could theoretically, eventually, spit out in the Gulf of Mexico some eleven-hundred miles downstream. The field is built for little league players, shortened base paths and pitcher’s mound. It’s also, as legend has it, where Babe Ruth once stood and hit a baseball into the Chadakoin River, some five hundred feet from home plate.

Except that isn’t exactly the place. The Babe belted the celebrated ball, but not quite where kids hit baseballs today. And he only did it in batting practice, not in an actual game.

Jump in your car, drive to the village of Celoron. Take the low roads, close to the water. From the west, you’ll trace the southern basin of Chautauqua Lake along Lakeside Drive, rounding onto Jackson Avenue. Keep your eyes and imagination open, lay all this land bare, take out the lakefront houses on Longview Road, take out Ellicott Shore Apartments. Take out the streets, take out the trees. Turn those acres into a vast island of green grass. Now put up a grandstand and a backstop, place bases ninety feet apart in a square, a mound sixty-feet, six-inches from the plate. Here you have Celoron baseball park circa 1921, when The Babe came to town.

When travel was more cumbersome than it is today, Western New York emerged as a convenient stop between Cleveland, Erie, and Buffalo. Celoron Park opened in 1895 and featured, at various times four major hotels and fifteen rooming houses, a bathhouse three stories tall with three toboggan slides, a barber shop, a hundred and fifty dressing rooms, a bowling alley, billiards rooms, shooting gallery, ice-cream parlor, an auditorium with Turkish spires five stories high that seated almost nine thousand. In the winter the floors were flooded for ice skating. A Theaterextended over the water and hosted dances, stage performances and vaudeville acts. The Phoenix Wheel, the world’s largest Ferris wheel, was ten stories tall with twelve cages, able to hold 168 thrilled passengers. The wooden Greyhound Roller Coaster hadthree loops and six-thousand lights.

George Maltby is the Celoron Park supervisor in 1921. He’s small, maybe 5’5”, wispy and fidgety, in charge of programming. He’s known locally for his bright attire, belted high-waisted jacket with wide lapels, narrow trousers, bright white suspenders, herringbone fedora, and deep red sideburns and mustache. He is the man most responsible for the headline in the Jamestown Morning Post October 18^th; Babe Ruth To Play Here, and below that, Home Run King, Bob Meusel And Piercy In Exhibition Game At Celoron Tuesday. It is a big undertaking to bring an attraction of this size and importance to Celoron, but Mr. Maltby, after posting a big guarantee decided to take a chance. Celoron Park will be filled to capacity, packed with men in double-breasted vests and single-breasted jackets, boys in knickers and flat hats, women in flapper dresses, drape hats, and bobbed hair. Horses, carriages and Model T’s clog the street. The ten-story Ferris wheel towers over the exhibition, patrons with vintage folding Kodak cameras ride to the top and record the spectacle, 1920’s version of a drone fly-by. The bustle is electric, dampened only by a light rain, muffling voices and footprints. Steamboats unload more Roaring 20’s characters at a huge public dock.

The game is anti-climactic compared to the spectacle and the memories. The big man does indeed hit a ball into the lake, but it’s during batting practice. A young boy retrieves the ball, keeping it from the thousand-mile journey to salt water.

Celoron today is a moderate lake-side city, roads lightly traveled, simple commerce and functional government buildings replace the epic bounty of Celoron Park. But the lake and the Chadakoin are the same as that day in 1921, with newer water; the steadfast shores, the current flow and shape of the outlet are fixed.

And if you listen close, the waters whisper of great days past, confident in its pedigree. If it could talk it might tell a story about the days when Celoron Park ruled the world of entertainment, and that day in October almost a century ago, when the Sultan of Swat stormed its shores.

The Princess Chautauqua

She knelt by the water, where the tip of Long Point State Park reaches out into Chautauqua Lake. In the small hills behind the peninsula, up where what is now Ellery Center, fires burned, screams and whoops echoed up and down the bluff. This was the end, the dying gasp of a people, of an identity, of her tribe. Anyone who survived the slaughter would be taken into slavery by the marauders.

She was trapped on this narrow spit of land. She could swim across the narrows to the other side of the lake, but there was really no escape, they’d be waiting by the time she reached shore. She couldn’t go back the way she came, there was only one path that led to the opening of the point.

She waded into the shallows.

In a world where information is ubiquitous, literally at the tip of the finger in quantity, it’s amazing that the word Chautauqua doesn’t have an authentic, agreed-upon translation. An etymological search will tell you it has Haudenosaunee origins -Haudenosaunee being another name for the Iroquois nation- describing something “tied in the middle”, like a bag, or a pair of shoes by the laces, the general shape of Lake Chautauqua with its northern and southern basins separated by the narrows at Bemus Point and Stow. That crossing is measured in yards, while the widest places, both north and south are around two miles from shore to shore (the lake itself is about seventeen miles end to end). Chautauqua can also refer to everything from indigenous lands in Colorado, to a cultural and educational movement from the late 1800s. That’s a wide swath of interpretation for a single word.

What’s known is that the Erie Indians who occupied our current borders, the original Chautauqua Lakers, were wiped out of existence (along with no fewer than eight other native tribes), by the French and the Iroquois Nation in the Beaver Wars, massacred or taken hostage by the martial factions. Before the people of Europe settled here, the bucolic landscape we know as Chautauqua County saw a fair share of carnage and bloodshed.

The speed with which the Iroquois engulfed regional Indian communities meant that no one had time to do an extensive study of the Erie language, and their native tongue died with them. What’s left are loose translations adopted from leftover Iroquois dialect, hence the word Chautauqua has renditions sweeping from the above mentioned “bag tied in the middle” to the vastly different “place where fish are taken.”

Then there’s the romantic, tragic myth of the Erie Indian Princess.

Legend has it her name was Chautauqua. Chat was a French supplied nickname for the Erie people, meaning “cat”, and Taquan which means “spiritually aware and prone to self-sacrifice”. When her people chose to fight the Iroquois rather than surrender, fool’s errand for the agrarian, mostly peaceful Erie tribe, they were destroyed by the fierce and combinative nation, eradicated as a show of force to discourage other tribes from resisting.

Wikipedia says: The Iroquois League was known for adopting captives and refugees into their tribes. Any surviving Erie were absorbed by other Iroquoian tribes, particularly families of the Seneca, the westernmost of the Five Nations. Susquehannock families may also have adopted some Erie, as the tribes had shared the hunting grounds of the Allegheny Plateau and Amerindian paths that passed through the gaps of the Allegheny. The members of remnant tribes living among the Iroquois gradually assimilated to the majority cultures, losing their independent tribal identities.

The Erie Indian people simply went away, and with them any coherent, stipulatory meaning of the word Chautauqua.

The Erie Princess Chautauqua waded deeper into cool waters off Long Point. She looked back at the land she knew, her birthplace and home. She pictured the faces of her family, her father, mother, brave brothers, and sisters. All gone now. She knew they wouldn’t survive the slaughter. There was nothing left for her but to commit the ultimate act of Indian royalty, the last great measure.

As the Iroquois warriors (along with French and Haitian mercenaries) approached from land, she turned and walked into the depths of the lake. In an act of defiance and sacrifice she drown herself. And thereby christened the body of water Chautauqua.

Chautuaqua Lake Sailing Challenges

Printed in The Villager May 2024

Were you passing on I-86 across the Chautauqua Memorial bridge last Monday morning, you would have been challenged to keep your vehicle between the narrow cement barriers that funnel traffic from the work being done on the overpass. In the water, the scene looked like the run-up to a catastrophe.

A large sailboat, named Trumpeter, sails stowed, steamed toward the center underpass, the highest point of passage under the bridge. The boat listed precariously to the starboard. If you weren’t familiar with the design of sailboats, their ability to heel at severe angles balancing tall masts with underwater keel and rudder, you’d be forgiven for believing you were about to witness the capsizing of the vessel.

But Trumpeter was under complete control by her captain, Greg Swan, principal owner of Ready About Sailing, the marina and boat sale business based in Celoron. She was tipped on her side intentionally, using 1,100 pounds of sandbags and four hearty shipmates to pass under the bridge whose clearance has now been reduced to 34’8” from its original 40’2”.

“Most of the twenty or so larger sailboats on Lake Chautauqua are stored at Ready About Sailing marina in Celoron during the winter,” Greg says. “In the Spring, we launch the boats, raise the masts, and then the boats are transported to the north basin where they are moored or docked for the summer. These sailors have always enjoyed free passage beneath the bridge.”

Deadheading sailboats from one basin of the lake to the other used to be a relatively easy process. Not anymore.

“The bottom line here is that the engineers that designed the bridge reconstruction project apparently failed to do their due diligence when deciding how the safety netting would be erected under the bridge to catch anything that might otherwise fall into the lake. They apparently did not consider sailboats during the design phase.”

The safety netting has lowered the clearance under the bridge by nearly 5 ½ feet. A sailboat that once had six feet of room under the bridge at flood level, now has less than one. And it will take some brilliant and daring seamanship to get from one side to the other until that clearance is lifted, which, according to New York State, won’t happen until the bridge is completed, a two-to-three-year period if every single thing goes according to plan.

Greg says,” What we are left with is an obstruction to sailing the full length of the lake for the duration of the bridge project.”

In order to transport his larger sailboat, Greg had to be creative and rely on his considerable boating skills to get Trumpeter to the north basin mooring. This was with the lake about two feet below flood level. A higher lake level or more wave and wind action would make the maneuver nearly impossible. “You’ve essentially taken half the lake away for use from these size boats,” Greg says.

There are twenty or so such sailing vessels he knows of that use the lake (well, now, half the lake). “The obstruction at the bridge has already caused multiple long-time Lake Chautauqua sailors to decide to sell their boats and give up the sport. This is tragic, especially since it could have been prevented if the right questions were asked to the right people before starting construction.”

The netting was a multi-million-dollar part of the overall bridge project, a necessary safety design to keep boaters safe from inevitable falling debris. Greg contacted the Department of Transportation in Buffalo to look for a solution. They were receptive, empathetic, but no help. “As the netting system was designed, there would be no way to remove the netting from even a single span to allow for sailboats to pass. And, the DOT has decided that it would be too expensive to retrofit.”

The NYS DOT was contacted for clarification. Here is the response from Susan Surdej, Assistant to Regional Director and Regional Public Information Officer for New York State Department of Transportation, Region 5:

The bridges carrying Interstate 86 over Chautauqua Lake are 100 percent safe for motorists. Out of an abundance of caution, the Department is re-evaluating plans for the safest, most efficient removal of concrete from the bridges carrying Interstate 86 over Chautauqua Lake. Occasional overnight closures are expected with a project of this size, but there are currently no plans for long-term closures. NYSDOT will keep the public apprised on any changes in the construction schedule once the evaluation is complete.

There was no response addressing the sailboat issue.

THE POINT CHAUTATQUA GOLF SITE PROJECT

“I tell ya, country clubs and cemeteries are the biggest waste of prime real estate.”

Al Czervic

It was inevitable, like the waves that lap against the back of seventh green. The land is just too beautiful, just too perfect, just too valuable.

The Chautauqua Point Golf Course, at 5678 East Lake Road in Dewittville sold recently, the second time in just over two years. In February of 2022 The Chautauqua Lake Development LLC of Springville purchased the property for just over a million dollars. They re-listed the property and this past July 2023, The 1200 Group of Buffalo bought the three parcels that made up the golf course for $2.2 million (along with other East Lake Road real estate belonging to the James K. Webb Living Trust, and Webb’s Harbor Restaurant and Bowling Lanes, Inc.).

The 1200 Group is led by Bill Paladino, son of Carl Paladino the ubiquitous Buffalo developer and politician.

The first sale brought to an end a century-long run for the local recreational treasure. With origins dating to 1907, or 1914, depending on which source you reference, the course was the oldest in the county, predating it’s younger, more famous and broader brother from across the lake, The Chautauqua Golf Club by at least ten years. The history of the golf course is a little muddy, but it’s generally agreed that the land was obtained by Henry Clay Fownes, designer of Oakmont Country Club in Pittsburgh, ostensibly to cater to Pittsburgh and Cleveland golfers looking to work on their game while summering on the lake. Oakmont, established in 1903, is regarded as the oldest top-ranked golf course in the United States, and has hosted 20 national golf championships; the U.S, Open is scheduled there in 2025; Chautauqua Point, overlooking the northern basin of the lake had some impressive pedigree. There is a rumor that the famed golf architect Donald Ross had a hand in designing the course, but there’s no indication from The Ross Society that this was the case (he did help design The Chautauqua Golf Club, so it’s possible he took a swing by the point to take a look). The course evolved over the years into a 9-hole gem, the only golf course that touches the lake, though condominium development over the years squeezed that lakefront border down to a few precious feet directly behind the seventh green.

The weather-dependence and uncertainty of making a golf course profitable, especially in this climate, finally gave way to the economics of developing prime real estate into a more profitable venture; East Lake Road on the lake side land is simply too valuable to leave unused under snow for five months a year. The course has been closed since the sale in 2022, the repurposing of the land unavoidable.

Tom Fox is the Director of Development for the Ellicott Development Company. He is heading up the group looking to turn the old Point Chautauqua Golf Course into a housing community. The project, tentatively called Sunset View at Point Chautauqua, has three distinct sections including single family homes, town houses, and condominium-style residential units.

Ellicott Development Company is out of Buffalo and stands as a prominent figure in Buffalo’s real estate sector. Founded in 1975 by William Paladino, this company has played a pivotal role in transforming Buffalo’s urban landscape through a strategic blend of development, redevelopment, and management. With a focus on enhancing both commercial and residential properties, Ellicott Development has significantly influenced the city’s economic and architectural evolution.

Ellicott Development Company’s origins are deeply intertwined with the historical development of Buffalo, New York. Established during a period when Buffalo was grappling with economic challenges and urban decay, the company emerged as a beacon of revitalization. The founder, William Paladino, envisioned a future where Buffalo’s historic structures could be repurposed to meet contemporary needs while preserving their architectural integrity. This vision has guided the company’s projects and strategy over the decades.

Mr. Fox recently hosted a meeting for the community. I followed up with Mr. Fox recently on his reaction to that meeting, and how the project will develop in the future.

Q: Your initial meeting with the community got mixed reviews. Some of the locals seemed against the development. Is that how you saw it?

Tom Fox (TF): We were happy to see a big turnout at the recent informational meeting we held on Sunset View. In our experience, active community interest and input results in a better project. There were many valid concerns that were raised, many of which will be reflected in revised and more developed plans as we further pursue the required approvals to move the project forward. Despite a general sense of negativity in the feedback at the meeting, we’ve heard a great deal of positive response as well since that time from those in support and with great interest in the success of our project. Our vision is to redevelop the property in a way that thoughtfully weaves into the existing community surrounding the former golf course property.

Q: That property served well as a golf course. How do you see it as a housing development?

TF: With its dynamic topography, the property has the benefit of incredible lake views including an orientation to the sunset, hence the development naming. Sunset View will offer a range of high-quality housing options in an amenity-rich resort-style environment that will be home to year-round residents and weekend vacationers alike.

Q: What are your next steps?

TF: Pending receipt of the necessary approvals, which we will continue to pursue following the mentioned plan revisions, we hope to start work on the initial phase of Sunset View next year. Completion of all project phases will be guided by market demand. We anticipate that the completion of all project phases could take several years.

Q: How do people find out more?

TF: Here is our project website, where we have project information posted along a video presentation and an opportunity for those interested to reach out with comments and questions…. Sunset View CLC – A Chautauqua Lake Community

To be sure, though there will continue to be a constituency that will miss the rolling fairways, pristine green space, and quaint clubhouse that was the legendary Chautauqua Point Golf Course.