Ball was born in Jamestown, but soon moved to a house in the nearby village of Celoron (the private residence still stands today at 59 Lucy Lane). Less than a mile north of where she grew up, you’ll find the Lucille Ball Memorial Park on the southeastern shore of Chautauqua Lake. Fans will find two bronze statues of Ball by the waterfront: a crude 2009 attempt by sculptor David Poulin, nicknamed “Scary Lucy,” and a much-improved 2016 re-do by Carolyn Palmer.

For more than 25 years, the Lucy Desi Museum has offered a behind-the-scenes look at the personal and professional lives of Ball and her almost-as-famous first husband, Desi Arnaz. The museum features exact replicas of I Love Lucy studio sets—including the Ricardos’ New York City apartment—awards, costumes, and props. A large gift shop offers officially licensed Desilu merchandise such as sweatshirts, mugs, and a squished penny machine.

In 1946, Ball took the stage herself to promote war bonds, telling the crowd: “They’ll tell you that California is God’s country … but God’s country is right here in Jamestown. Think of the change of seasons, the gardens, lilacs blooming in the spring—it’s a wonderful, wonderful place.” Owned since 1968 by New York State’s longest-running community theater organization, The Little Theatre of Jamestown, the space was formally renamed in 1991 with Ball’s family in attendance.

The National Comedy Center opened in 2018 as an extension and expansion on the Lucy Desi Museum. With hundreds of immersive exhibits alongside artifacts from comedy legends such as Richard Pryor, Andy Kaufman, and Carol Burnett, the museum is also home to at least one iconic piece of memora-Ball-ia: Lucy’s iconic polka dot dress. The raunchier stuff is relegated to the basement, where visitors can snicker over George Carlin’s list of dirty words in the R-rated “Blue Room.”

When Ball died in April 1989, she was cremated and interred in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Hollywood, California. In 2002, she was reinterred along with her mother in a family plot in Jamestown. No disrespect for the other permanent residents of Lake View Cemetery, but Ball is clearly very much the star in death that she was in life: Visitors to this historic burial ground can follow a white line painted on the cemetery road (punctuated every few feet by a red heart enclosing a white, script “L”).