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The period from the late 1800s through the mid-1900s is fondly remembered as the heyday of the Chautauqua Lake region in southwestern New York State. It was a wondrous era, when railroads, steamboats, and trolleys transported local residents as well as wealthy and socially prominent families from Buffalo, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Cincinnati, and St. Louis to their summertime destinations around Chautauqua Lake.
Showcased in Chautauqua Lake Region are not only adjacent lakeside communities, industries, and occupations of the residents but also the exceptional natural beauty of the lake itself, its importance to early navigation, its recreational attributes, and its overall allure as a tourist mecca. This "pocket museum" focuses on the myriad attractions that once dotted the lake's forty-two-mile shoreline: hotels, parks, camps, picnic groves, rowing clubs, boat liveries, fish hatcheries, icehouses, railroad and trolley depots, and steamboat landings.
About the author
Passionate about their ancestral roots in Chautauqua County, Kathleen Crocker, manager of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle at the Chautauqua Institution, and Jane Currie, photojournalist and shopkeeper, also coauthored Chautauqua Institution, 1874-1974. For Chautauqua Lake Region, they gathered primarily from private collections nearly two hundred images, many of them never before published, and combined them with local lore and eyewitness accounts gleaned from personal interviews. The result is a thought-provoking and historically accurate visual retrospective that stands as a high tribute to the unique heritage and unforgettable charm of the region.
