This will be the Chautauqua Town Historical Society’s monthly meeting and lecture, Thursday, Aug. 21 at 7 p.m. in the Chautauqua Town Hall, Veteran’s Memorial Meeting Room, 2 Academy Street, Mayville.

Jane Currie, with her co-author Kathleen Crocker, has published five books on the Lake Chautauqua region with Arcadia Publishing, a major publisher of popular regional history and geography books. The first was Chautauqua Institution, 1874-1974 (2001), followed by Chautauqua Lake Region (2002), Jamestown (2004), Westfield (2008), and most recently, Legendary Locals of the Chautauqua Lake Region (2013).

The video tour that Currie will be showing was actually shot in 1995, so this is the 30th anniversary. It is led by Ford Cadwell, Currie’s stepfather, a year before he passed away. Born in Point Chautauqua in 1904 into a family of farmers and cheese makers, Ford Cadwell lived in Dewittville, and started the Cadwell Cheese House in 1927. It is still going strong and managed by Currie today. Ford’s father, Ward Cadwell lived in Point Chautauqua and besides running a livery stable and continuing the family craft of cheese making, he built many of the houses at Point Chautauqua.

While there is a wealth of fascinating history and lore surrounding the Lake Chautauqua region, Point Chautauqua stands out as a planned community designed by Frederick Law Olmstead. Olmstead is recognized as the founder of American landscape architecture and America’s foremost park builder.

Point Chautauqua marker/monument, National Register of Historic Places

It is estimated that Olmstead, later joined by his sons, and their subsequent firm built more than 6,000 projects and parks. Starting in 1857, his first project was designing and building New York City’s Central Park. A more auspicious start could hardly be imagined! But the total oeuvre he directed over the next four decades boggles the mind. It includes some 70 university, college, and prep school campuses, almost exclusively among the most prestigious institutions including Yale, Stanford, Harvard Business School, University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins, Wellesley, Smith, Oberlin, Phillips Andover, and on and on. The list of civic and private designs is no less impressive. To name a few, they include Chicago’s 1893 World Columbian Exposition, the United States Capitol Grounds, the National Zoo, the Biltmore Estate, and Buffalo’s city park system.

Ford Cadwell will take viewers around Point Chautauqua, highlighting various houses, while offering anecdotes about the community’s points of interest, various incidents, and some of its past residents.