Canandaigua Lake - Squaw Island

Squaw Island

Squaw Island is located at the north end of the lake. It is the smallest Fish and Wildlife Management Area in New York State and one of only two islands in the eleven Finger Lakes. The Seneca recall that the island was used to hide the Seneca women and children during the Sullivan Expedition against the Six Nations of the Iroquois in 1779. The island exhibits an extremely rare form of carbonate of lime forms deposits on pebbles (conglomerate). It is a feathery light rock which is calcified from algae filtered by sand and pond scum. The rock, locally called "water biscuits", is hard in the water but crumbles if allowed to dry out. In recent years the island has been eroding rapidly from the forces of ice, wind, water currents and development changing the wave patterns.

In 1977, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation installed a cedar log buffer around the island to help preserve it. Its size, approximately 2 acres (0.81 ha) in 1853, shrank by 75% in 162 years, to about 0.25 acres (0.10 ha) in 1971. Today only 55 feet (17 m) by 145 feet (44 m) of the island remains. A newly formed group called the Squaw Island Preservation Society has raised citizen support to protect the island and its unique place in science and local history, after state officials said they would no longer maintain it. Work on the preservation was completed in Summer 2001.