"... a sweet place, with sweet surroundings. It is to Ohio, and particularly Cincinnati, whatHastings or Southend is to London—a quiet, middle-class watering-place. Already [May 15, 1866] every vacant house has been secured for the summer months. The attractions of Jamestown are its cheerful look, it fine prospects from the mountains, and its glorious lake. The lake, Chatauqua,is barely a mile from the town, and is reputed to be the highest navigable water on the American continent, being 1290 feet above the level of the Atlantic, and 730 feet above Lake Erie. Fish of all sorts abound; but the favourite is the pickerel, which not unfrequently weighs 40 lb.

But the lake is also useful, and long has been so, to the plodding Dutchmen and others, who settled on its borders before railways superceded the teams, which made dry goods pilgrimages to Erie or Buffalo one or twice a year, Upon the lake there were places at an early period sail and row boats, and these not only kept up communication with the outer world, but induced the outer world to come in with some freeness, and enjoy a land literally flowing with milk and honey. Will it be believed, that during the butter season Jamestown send daily to New York, by the Atlantic and Great Western Railway, the considerable quantity of ten to fifteen tons of butter; and that during the cheese season it sends a corresponding supply of cheese? And, with the single exception of Orange County cheese and butter, those of Jamestown command, and have long commanded, the highest prices in New York.

Manufactures also flourish. There are four saw-mills, three furniture factories, one piano factory, two woolen factories, three sash, door and blind factories, two machine shops, two edge tools shops, and a gas-work. There are also five hotels, three banks, eight churches, andtwo newspapers. The water power is second best in the State of New York"

from the 1866 book Over the Atlantic and Great Western Railway (http://wnyrails.railfan.net/ jtn_home.htm)