Smoke from hundreds of wildfires in the Midwest and Canada caused our air quality to deteriorate rapidly, reaching unhealthy levels. While we are fortunate not to be directly experiencing the devastating impacts of communities and ecosystems going up in flames, we still suffered the ill effects of the resulting smoke, and continue to do so at times.

For more than two centuries, Chautauqua Lake has been shaped not just by what happens on its waters, but by everything that flows into them. During much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the heyday of settlement, agriculture, and the furniture industry, Chautauqua County’s landscape changed dramatically.