Little did Post-Journal readers know when they picked up their paper that the then-unnamed replica steamboat’s whistle would become one of the most familiar sounds to anyone who would spend much time on Chautauqua Lake for the next five decades.

Saturday, July 11, the Chautauqua Belle will celebrate its 50th birthday with specially priced cruises and a trip past Midway State Park, which will be launching fireworks as part of its own anniversary celebration. The party comes 50 years after the Chautauqua Belle’s first cruise on Chautauqua Lake and 23 years after it looked like the Belle might not celebrate another birthday. What follows is a brief trip through time explaining how the Belle has arrived at a point in its history where it is the undisputed queen of Chautauqua Lake.

FOR THE UNINITIATED

The Chautauqua Belle is 98 feet long and 22 feet wide, and weighs 70 tons fully loaded. She has a 100-horsepower Scotch steam boiler aboard which supplies steam at 210 pounds per square inch (1,400 kPa) to the two 20 horsepower steam engines which turn her paddlewheel. She has a 60-horsepower Uniflow marine steam engine manufactured by Skinner Engine Company which is attached via a belt drive to a 30 kilowatt generator to provide her electricity needs. Her top speed is 7 miles per hour (11 km/h). The engines were built for the Chautauqua Belle by Harry McBride in 1975. She has a mechanical steering system with cable operation of two rudders mounted on the stern ahead of her paddlewheel.

The Chautauqua Belle is pictured moored in Lakeside Park in Mayville in the early 1980s.

The ship’s design features many of the architectural details, like cambered decks to shed water from her roof and a sheer line to evenly distribute the weight of the boilers, engines and paddlewheel. Features such as her gingerbread trim and wedding cake stacked superstructure are indigenous to the Mississippi River-styled steamboat. This style of deck layout, which became the pinnacle of all steamboat architecture, was pioneered by Henry Shreve and his steamboat Washington of 1824. The vessel featured a barge-like hull which allowed the steamboat to carry immense weight while maintaining a shallow draft for navigation on the shallow inland rivers.

‘STEAMBOAT VILLAGE’

Fifty-three years ago, no one knew quite what to expect when they saw that a businessman wanted to run a paddleboat on Chautauqua Lake. The reporter who attended the Oct. 9, 1973, Mayville Village Board meeting said board members were enthusiastic when they gave their approval to a proposal from an unnamed Rochester man – a man who we would later find out was James Webster – to use the Mayville train depot building as the home port for his boat. The ship was under construction as of 1973 and was described as being 80 feet long with two decks and a stern paddle wheel. The only change necessary was digging out a few feet of lake front in order to dock the boat and put in pilings. Webster planned to pay for the work himself with a target date of Memorial Day 1975 to launch his steamship.

The ship didn’t launch on Webster’s original timetable. One hurdle was the lack of a sheltered channel where Webster could moor his steamer when it wasn’t on Chautauqua Lake. In 1974, Webster’s Chautauqua Lake Steam Navigation Co. purchased the Mayville Marina on Whallon Street Extension. The ship, which was designed by Capt. Alan Bates of Louisville, Ky., would be built in Mayville. Bates was noted as the designer and builder of the Natchez, an authentic steam-powered paddlewheel boat built in 1975 in New Orleans.

“It looks more and more like the boat will be constructed right here in Mayville,” Webster said at the time.

The Chautauqua Belle is pictured out of the water in this early 1980s file photo.

In May 1975, Webster appeared before the Village Board again, with the board approving the use of the Mayville Municipal Landing as a departure point for Webster’s steamship. Webster said the ship – which still hadn’t been named – was expected to begin operating around Memorial Day 1976 with plans to offer 90-minute excursions, two-hour dinner cruises, moonlight cruises with live music and charters. Instead, the steamer christened the Chautauqua Belle launched in 1776 as part of Chautauqua County’s celebration of the United States bicentennial.

Nine days after launching the Belle, Webster returned to the Village Board with a request to eliminate entrance fees for those who were coming to Lakeside Park to take a ride on the steamship. At the time, all non-Mayville residents were asked to pay a $2 entrance fee to the park, something Webster said was creating problems.

“However, with the berthing of the Belle in the park, a gaggle of spectators followed who were unaware of the entrance fee and indignant after they learned of it,” a July 13, 1976, article in The Post-Journal reported. “Also, Mr. Webster feared he’d lose business if potential customers for his steamer rides were antagonized by the entrance fees.”

Board members moderated the park entrance fees while also discussing the village’s no-alcohol policy in the park after concerns were aired that charter passengers on the Belle were finishing drinks in the park after they disembarked from the ship. But, overall, the initial experience was positive.

“Area residents support the ‘Belle’ so strongly, the board said, it had become a delicate problem to make rules concerning it,” the newspaper reported.

Passengers are pictured on the Chautauqua Belle during a trip in the early 1980s.

Business was so good in the first two years that Webster came back to the Mayville Village Board in 1978 to ask permission to take out billboards advertising Mayville as “Steamboat Village’ – a moniker to which board members did not object – while telling board members that Webster wanted to add a second ship to his fleet.

ROUGH WATERS

The Chautauqua Belle became part of the regular sights and sounds around Chautauqua Lake as the steamer settled into life as one of five operating authentic passenger sternwheel steamboats left in North America. The other four vessels are the Virginia V, in Seattle, Washington; Minne-Ha-Ha at Lake George, New York, operating on Lake George; the Belle of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky, operating on the Ohio River; and the Natchez in New Orleans, Louisiana, operating on the Mississippi River.

Webster did end up donating a second steamship to be used on Chautauqua Lake. By then, Webster had lived in Falconer before relocating to Florida. In 1993, Webster donated the Griffith II steamship to Chautauqua Lake Historic Vessels, the organization that eventually took ownership of the Chautauqua Belle, the Sea Lion, the Bemus Point-Stow Ferry and other ships in what was, for a while, a multi-ship operation. As of late 1989, there was also a Bemus Point-area excursion boat named the Blue Heron and a Chadakoin River excursion boat named the Beaver. Both ships were christened in 1989 – but the ride didn’t last long.

The Sea Lion was eventually sold, sank and, earlier this year, was scrapped as efforts to save the ship were unsuccessful. The Blue Heron, the Beaver and Griffith II faded away. The Chautauqua Belle almost did as well.

A crowd of onlookers is pictured in the early 1980s as a group of passengers is loaded onto the Chautauqua Belle.

Her 25th anniversary season in 2001 was delayed more than a month after a fish-line crack was discovered during its annual inspection. The area where the crack was found was originally quarter-inch thick steel when the Chautauqua Belle was built in the mid 1970s, but officials were unsure how thick the hull was in 2001 after years of wear. At the same time the Belle was in the midst of having new steam stacks installed. By the end of the 2001 season Chautauqua Lake Historic Vessels officials were asking for public input whether or not there was support for the Belle to continue on Chautauqua Lake as even more major repairs were needed.

“It would be extremely helpful to us and to the board as a whole to have a grasp of what people are thinking on this issue,” said James Loutzenhiser, a longtime member of the Chautauqua Lake Historic Vessels board. “Removing the ‘Belle’ from service on Chautauqua Lake is a big step and I would hope people would give us input before that decision becomes unchangeable.”

After the 2003 excursion season the ship was docked for three years. Twenty-seven seasons of heavy use had left their mark on the Belle as ridership declined. A sale offer was made by a local businessman in 2006, but nothing materialized amidst confusion over the legitimacy of the ship’s ownership group. By 2007, a “For Sale” sign hung on the ship’s bow where hundreds of happy passengers had once boarded the ship.

“To put it mildly, it was a mess,” said John Cheney, an Ellery resident and board member of a revitalized Chautauqua Lake Historic Vessels, in February 2007. “Nothing has been done since literally 2001.”

ENTER THE STAGE FAMILY

Photo courtesy of the Chautauqua Belle's Facebook page The Chautauqua Belle is pictured with a speedboat in the foreground on Chautauqua Lake during the 2025 season.

One member of that revitalized board was Paul Stage, who was installed as Chautauqua Lake Historic Vessels board president when a new board took over the organization in October 2006. The group had made the decision to put the Chautauqua Belle on the market, but only if the ship remained on Chautauqua Lake and sold for a reasonable price. Group members split up into three groups to handle the Belle, Bemus Point-Stow Ferry and Sea Lion under a new entity called Sea Lion Project Ltd.

“There are three diverse groups in the Sea Lion Project,” Stage told The Post-Journal in March 2007. “That’s what’s always been an issue. It’s very difficult to get a 15-member board working in the same direction on all of those things.”

Enter Paul Stage’s son, Mathew, who purchased the vessel in 2007 for $40,000 along with his father, creating U.S. Steam Lines Ltd. By 2008, the Chautauqua Belle was back on Chautauqua Lake with the younger Stage at the helm after an offseason spent making numerous upgrades and repairs that included a new generator, a new bow thruster that allows the Belle to travel sideways and improved the historic vessel’s mobility; a GPS system that allowed the crew to chart courses and gather data, a new sound system and window coverings on the ship’s second level. The first summer included a trip up to McCrae Point in Jamestown, a stop that was once familiar for the Chautauqua Belle but which hadn’t been made in years prior to 2008.

Improvements have been ongoing in Mayville to improve the area where the Chautauqua Belle is docked. And, while the Belle can’t get into the Chadakoin River because of ongoing construction on the Veterans Memorial Bridge on Chautauqua Lake, Mathew Stage told Mayville Village Board members in 2025 that the Belle continues to run better than it has in decades.

“My dad and I continue to be proud of what we’ve accomplished. We’re grateful for all of your support. We’re excited about our future here in Mayville and we’ll keep the Belle going as long as we can in the family,” he said.

The Chautauqua Belle is pictured in 2025 moored in Lakeside Park at dusk.

In this 2019 photo, former Jamestown Mayor Sam Teresi, left, and Paul O. Stage, U.S. Steam Lines Ltd. president, are pictured at McCrea Point Park with the Chautauqua Belle. Standing in back, from left, are Bill Stevenson, Jamestown Riverfront Management Council chairman; Julia Ciesla-Hanley, city recreation coordinator; and John Williams, city parks manager. City and Chautauqua Belle officials signed the lease agreement for the Belle to use McCrea Point Park for five years.