Summertime is wonderful in Chautauqua County! Residents and visitors to our area are well aware of the recreational opportunities that our lakes offer. Lake Erie, Chautauqua, Findley, Bear, and the Cassadaga Lakes each receive their share of boaters, fisher(wo)men, swimmers, and paddlers, and all those water bodies are buzzing with activity these days.
However, Chautauqua County has much more to offer when it comes to on-water recreation, and the Chautauqua Watershed Conservancy has been working hard for the past two years to make our county’s major waterways safe and enjoyable for recreational use again – while also working to make these waterways better able to drain snowmelt and stormwater without causing excess erosion. This increased hydrological resilience is important in the face of a changing climate and the increased storm intensity we all have been experiencing lately. And the Conservancy is committed to maintaining our region’s excellent water quality as much as possible.
Clearly these beautiful lakes do not exist in a vacuum in our landscape. Water enters into them through a variety of tributaries that originate in our watersheds, while on the downstream end of each lake there generally is a sizeable outlet to drain them. Not all of our lakes have as spectacular a drainage as Lake Erie does - Niagara Falls is hard to beat in that respect – but they all are all beautiful in their own right and have a lot to offer in terms of recreational opportunities.
Findley Lake feeds French Creek, which is known nationally as a biodiversity hotspot. It’s the most biologically diverse aquatic system in the Northeastern US and contains five times more species than an average New York stream, including rare fish and endangered mussels that are found hardly anywhere else!
Chautauqua Lake becomes a linear waterbody in the city of Jamestown, and we call it the Chadakoin River from that point on. The Chadakoin River joins Cassadaga Creek just north of Falconer and adds Chautauqua Lake’s water to the drainage coming out of both Bear Lake and the Cassadaga Lakes. About 9.5 miles downstream from there, Cassadaga Creek meets Conewango Creek, which enters from Cattaraugus County near the town of Kennedy, and flows south into Pennsylvania near Route 62 to eventually meet the Allegheny River in Warren. In all, the county’s major waterways (Cassadaga and Conewango Creeks) provide over 50 miles of recreational potential. The southern section of the Conewango carries the combined outflow of several lakes and offers bigger water than the narrower sections that are found closer to their respective sources. All provide great opportunities for fishing and nature enjoyment from a kayak, canoe, or paddleboard – even a small (inflatable) boat with an electric trawling motor may work in areas of bigger water – but note that none of the launches support boat trailers.
Chautauqua County’s Marden Cobb Waterway Trail consists of a series of launches and lean-tos that once provided the infrastructure to activate these major waterways, but long-term lack of maintenance and the added challenge of Emerald Ash Borer-caused tree die-offs have created log jams, navigational hazards, and obstructions to healthy flow in our rivers. Since the fall of 2023, Chautauqua Watershed Conservancy staff has been working with local experts, including certified arborist Vince Liuzzo and skilled equipment operators, to start making these waterways safe again. Funded through an American Rescue Plan Act allocation from Chautauqua County, we are slowly working our way through the systems, mapping the various challenges, prioritizing log removals that pose imminent hazards to the safety of boaters and those that have the potential to divert the flow of a creek and cause property damage because of flooding or bank erosion. We’re also reimagining an expanded system of launch points to support increased activity on the creeks once they’re made safe again. We are on track to clear about 20 miles of Cassadaga Creek this summer and have already cleared more than 11 miles of the lower Conewango Creek. It is our hope that we can host a public paddle sometime later this summer to celebrate the re-opening of Cassadaga Creek.
For now, if you want to enjoy the beauty of our county waterways, I recommend starting on the Lower Conewango, perhaps putting in at one of the two county launches in Frewsburg and floating down to the county launch near the state line, off Route 62. While you’re enjoying a leisurely paddle, keep an eye out for Bald Eagles, Softshell Turtles, Kingfishers and, if you’re lucky, Sandhill Cranes along the river. I promise that you will forget, at times, that you are still in Chautauqua County when you follow the beauty of our lakes downstream.
Article and photo by Twan Leenders, Director of Conservation
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