Editing Cassadaga, New York (section)

== History ==
''Cassadaga'' is a [[Seneca people|Seneca]] name meaning "water under the rocks", descriptive of the natural springs of the area flowing from glacial [[moraine]]s. In dry weather, many of the local streams would "disappear", and the spring-fed water runs wholly within the gravelly bottoms of the stream beds draining from the surrounding hills.

Cassadaga was settled by European Americans in 1848 at the headwaters of the technically navigable Cassadaga Creek. Practically, the upper few miles of it are not navigable in the 21st century, due to numerous shallows and beaver activity along its course. Many of the settlers had migrated from New England and eastern New York after the American Revolutionary War. They gradually migrated westward as this territory was opened up for settlement after the [[Seneca people]] and other [[Iroquois League]] tribes had been forced out of the state after the war.

The village was formally incorporated in 1921.

Early settlers harvested the abundant and large trees (some exceeding {{convert|5|ft}} in diameter) as a primary source of income. They shipped them downstream to markets via log rafts and flatboats on the creek as [[timber]], [[charcoal]] and [[pearl ash]], the latter two products in demand in the early [[Industrial Age]].

The [[Dunkirk, Allegheny Valley and Pittsburgh Railroad]], which laid track from [[Dunkirk, New York]], and eventually to [[Warren, Pennsylvania]], was constructed on the west side of the Cassadaga Lakes in the spring of 1871. It also ran through the then adjoining [[Hamlet (New York)|hamlet]] of Burnhams, which was later annexed by the village. The railroad contributed greatly to the economy of the area, both as a source of population growth and visitors to the lakes and rolling hills for recreation, and for transportation of the forest and farm products of the area to urban centers.

Workers [[Ice#Harvesting|harvested ice]] from the lakes in winter for refrigeration, shipping it to other cities. The Webster Citizens Company [[Ice house (building)|ice house]] stood on the west shore of the Upper Lake, with a three-car rail siding to serve it, and was listed as a railroad business as late as 1931. The Cassadaga Spring Water Company had a siding on the Middle Lake where it bottled water from a leased spring on the north side of the Glenn Halladay farm for shipment by rail to city customers, primarily in [[Buffalo, New York|Buffalo]]. It ceased operations by the late 1920s as municipal water supply systems improved. The rail line was abandoned after extensive flood damage near Sinclairville from [[Hurricane Agnes]] in 1972, and subsequently removed.