The Thousand Islands

The Castles

Not that you think all of the Thousand Islands is wilderness and boat or cabin life…

Boldt Castle, Heart Island

The Alster, modeled after a castle on the Rhine, a man cave with bowling alleys and taxidermy where guests were entertained upon arrival to the island.

George Boldt commissioned this castle in 1900 as a birthday present for his wife. She died in 1904, before it was completed. All work stopped when she died and the castle fell into disrepair. It was taken over by the Thousand Island Bridge Authority in 1977.

When the Bridge Authority took over, this is representative of the condition in which they found the property. It had been neglected and abused for 73 years.

These photos are representative of the restoration work that the TIBA has done to date. The Boldts never resided in this structure so all of the restoration has been done using plans that were left behind or from other examples of the same period.

The center bay has the height needed to accommodate Boldt’s sailing yacht’s mast.

Singer Castle, Dark Island

Unlike Boldt Castle, this was the actual residence of Fredrick Bourne, the fifth President of the Singer Corporation, then his daughter Marjorie and finally a religious order. In that regard, it is more impressive for its authenticity although less opulent. Built in 1905, Bourne fulfilled himself a childhood dream, with secret passage ways and stairs running through the the castle on all five floors.

The Islands

The Thousand Islands have provided ample opportunity to anchor in quiet, uncrowded bays and still have direct access to the offerings on the different islands. From the water, it is impossible, sometimes, to tell that you can reach the same site by car!

Wellesley Island State Park

Thousand Island Park, Wellesley Island

Thousand Island Park is a small summer enclave on Wellesley Island whose story is the same as Oaks Bluff on Martha’s Vineyard: a Methodist summer tent camp which has evolved into a Victorian cottage community.

A sculpture outside of TI Park’s library…

Rock Island Lighthouse

The original lighthouse is the structure above the gray “belt”. It was first located behind the keeper’s cottage 🙄. It was relocated to the edge of Rock Island (so it was actually visible) and placed on the base you see in this picture in 1903. The mystery is how… there is not even one record of this work being done.

Cedar Island

Fellow travelers making their way through the islands…

Plan B

What the heck are we doing, right? We have not abandoned our plans for the Great Loop in favor of the Triangle Loop but we did need to assess our journey to date. (see Stuck? No, We Are on Vacation…) Phoenix was a way-station to Oswego where we needed to determine our best course of action: step the mast, sail to Youngstown, hire a captain and relinquish the boat for 1-3 days OR assume that our new best friend Brandon’s (Erie Canal engineer in charge of the repairs) time guesstimates are mostly accurate and head into the Thousand Islands. There was no compelling right answer… As you can see from the map, we opted for the side trip to the Thousand Islands.

We will island hop around here until July 9th or so and then make our way back to the canal and stage ourselves to be the FIRST boat through Lock 29 once the repairs are complete. In the meantime, we are on vacation… again! 🙃