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It’s Western New York’s oldest conversation
Lily Dale sits on Cassadaga Lake in Chautauqua County, about an hour southwest of Buffalo.
Only 275 people live here year-round, but roughly 22,000 visitors show up every year to walk through old-growth forest, sit in on mediumship services, and wander Victorian streets painted in pinks, purples, and blues.
The community earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 2022. That alone would make it worth the drive, but the real pull runs deeper than the history books.
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Freethinkers built it, suffragists shaped it
The whole thing started in 1879 as the Cassadaga Lake Free Association, a camp for Spiritualists and freethinkers. The name changed to the City of Light in 1903, then Lily Dale Assembly in 1906…