Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Cassadaga, NY

Cassadaga is a village in the northeast corner of the town of Stockton in Chautauqua County, just north of Sinclairville and immediately south of the Spiritualist community of Lily Dale.

The name Cassadaga is a Seneca word meaning water beneath the rocks, a reference to the natural springs that flow from the area's glacial moraines and can make local streams seem to disappear underground in dry weather.

Cassadaga was settled in 1848 at the headwaters of Cassadaga Creek, but it was not formally incorporated as a village until 1921.

The village sits at the south end of the Lower Cassadaga Lake, the last of a chain of three spring-fed lakes, and roughly a fifth of the village's area is water.

Although the Cassadaga Lakes start only about 10 miles from Lake Erie, their waters drain south through Cassadaga Creek to the Conewango Creek, the Allegheny and Ohio rivers, and ultimately the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico.

The Dunkirk, Allegheny Valley and Pittsburgh Railroad was built along the west side of the lakes in 1871, bringing visitors to the lakes and carrying out farm and forest products, as well as ice harvested from the lakes in winter for refrigeration.

Early settlers floated timber, charcoal, and pearl ash down Cassadaga Creek on log rafts and flatboats, cutting trees that sometimes exceeded five feet in diameter.

Cassadaga had 569 residents at the 2020 census, down from 634 in 2010.