By, Barbara Arnstein
How would you like to take a cruise?
Captain Paul Johnson takes passengers out on several different types of cruises all of which depart from the Long Point State Park Marina, and regales them with tales about the fascinating local history.
On September 7th at 7pm, at the Busti Bi-Centennial Celebration in the Lakewood Fireman’s Grounds (37 Packard Ave, Lakewood, NY 14750), he will be lecturing about Packard history (connected with the Packard automobile) and on September 13th, at 7pm, at the Fenton History Museum (67 Washington Street) in Jamestown, he will be lecturing about the timeline of Chautauqua Lake steamboats and hotels.
“Governor Fenton’s son-in-law, Frank Gifford, used to take his yacht from Long Point down to the boat landing, where his chauffer would pick him up and take him to him to work. He was the President of the First National Bank”, said the Captain, mentioning a detail from one of the stories he tells onboard. Another fascinating detail from a story he tells on cruises involves one of the Packard brothers. The two brothers, W.D. and J.W. Packard, developed Packard Electric (which became Delphi Packard, which eventually became a division of General Motors) and the Packard automobile company.
“When W.D. became blind later in life”, he said, “he had a second home built in Warren, Ohio, that was a duplicate of his first house, at a 75% scale, so that when he was there, he would know where everything was. His mansion was designed by architects who had just finished doing Grand Central Station”.
One relaxing cruise takes passengers past the iconic Bell Tower, the impressive Atheneum Hotel the Packard museum at the Chautauqua Institution. Cruising around Bemus Bay, you can see Lakeside Drive homes from the water and the busy village of Bemus Point. If the cruise goes to the South Basin, and down the Chadakoin River, you can see “the boat landing” at McCrea Point Park. A special point of interest on that route is Celeron, where Lucille Ball lived as a child. The recommended duration of these cruises is between two to four hours.
Another cruise, with a recommended span of two to three hours, involves the use of Garmin GPS with side scan sonar to locate sunken steamboats. Between 1827 and 1975 there were over 40 different steamboats in Chautauqua Lake, and they were the only public transportation to the Chautauqua Institution until 1904.
The cruise focusing on the historic sites of Chautauqua takes passengers along the Bemus Bay shoreline to the Lenhart Hotel in Bemus Point, to the Atheneum and the Packard Mansion. The Lenhart and The Atheneum are the only two resort hotels remaining from the heyday of Chautauqua Lake, and the captain talks about their history as well as those long gone.
For more information, go to http://www.OneFineDayCHQ.com, or call (716) 450-3663.
On your adventures aboard the charters by Paul you will see things like: Sunken remains of steamboat “City of Buffalo”. It was intentionally sunk September 1929 after they burned the superstructure for a Labor Day event at Celoron Park. The automible had replaced the steamboats as transportation and this was a means of disposal.