Forget the Hamptons — New York’s real island getaway has castles, shipwrecks, and 1,800+ tiny islands

Where Lake Ontario’s water splits around islands

The St. Lawrence River flows out of Lake Ontario’s northeast corner and spreads across 1,864 islands over 50 miles of the U.S.-Canada border in northern New York. Some islands hold full homes.

Others are just rock with a single tree. To count as an island here, the land has to stay above water year-round, cover at least one square foot, and support one living tree.

UNESCO named the region a World Biosphere Reserve in 2002, and the castles, shipwrecks, and fishing villages packed into this stretch of river make that easy to understand.

Gilded Age millionaires turned islands into private estates

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, wealthy New Yorkers found this stretch of river and started building. Mansions went up on island after island, and the region became a summer playground for the rich.

Two men went bigger than the rest. Hotel magnate George Boldt and Singer Manufacturing president Frederick Gilbert Bourne each built a full castle on his own island.

Both castles still stand, and you can tour them today. The waterfront villages of Alexandria Bay, Clayton, Cape Vincent and Sackets Harbor are your main jumping-off points.

A 120-room castle built for love, abandoned in grief

George Boldt ran the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City.

In 1900, he started building a six-story, 120-room castle on Heart Island as a grand gesture for his wife, Louise. He hired 300 workers and had the island itself reshaped to look like a heart.

Then, in January 1904, Louise died suddenly. Boldt stopped all work that day and never came back.

The castle sat empty for 73 years until the Thousand Islands Bridge Authority took it over in 1977 and began restoring it.

Secret passageways run through this granite island castle

Frederick Gilbert Bourne bought Dark Island in 1902 and hired architect Ernest Flagg to design a 28-room castle modeled after one from a Sir Walter Scott novel.

Workers quarried granite from nearby Oak Island and finished it in two years. A five-story clock tower rises from the center, and secret passageways wind through the building.

Tunnels connect the outer structures.

You can take a 45-minute guided tour through four floors of original furnishings, and if you want to stay the night, you can book the Royal Suite.

Row a St. Lawrence skiff past 320 antique boats

The Antique Boat Museum sits on 4.5 acres along the river in Clayton and holds more than 320 boats, the largest collection of antique and classic boats in North America.

You’ll find Native American canoes, St. Lawrence skiffs, Gold Cup racers and early speedboats inside. George Boldt’s 106-foot houseboat, La Duchesse, is open for tours.

If you want to get on the water yourself, the museum runs speedboat rides in a classic triple-cockpit runabout and lets you row a traditional skiff along the Clayton shoreline.

Camp on an island surrounded by water on all sides

Wellesley Island State Park is the biggest camping complex in the region, with more than 400 campsites, cabins and cottages on an island in the middle of the St. Lawrence River.

Water views wrap around you in every direction. The park has a full-service marina, four boat launches, a sandy beach and a nine-hole golf course.

Inside the park, the Minna Anthony Common Nature Center covers 600 acres with nine miles of trails through forests, wetlands and rocky outcrops.

Summer brings a 36-foot Voyageur canoe ride and a butterfly house.

Cruise past Millionaires Row from a glass-bottom boat

Boat tours launch from Alexandria Bay and Clayton, and USA Today readers once voted this the top spot in America for scenic boat rides. Narrated cruises pass grand island homes, lighthouses and both castles.

You can pick from glass-bottom boats, sunset cruises or castle shuttles.

If you’d rather go at your own pace, rent a kayak, canoe or paddleboard and weave through the islands yourself.

Many tours follow Millionaires Row, where some of the most lavish Gilded Age homes still stand on private islands along the river.

Dive 15 feet down to a 19th-century wooden schooner

The St. Lawrence River holds more than 200 known shipwrecks, and the cold freshwater keeps many of them in remarkable shape. Visibility typically runs 50 to 70 feet, stretching up to 100 feet in fall.

Centuries of shipping traffic between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic pushed vessels into the rocky river bottom, and they stayed.

Popular sites include the Islander, a wooden steamer near Alexandria Bay, and the SS Keystorm, a steel cargo ship near Singer Castle.

Some wrecks start in just 15 feet of water, so you don’t need advanced certification to see them.

One of 70 working Fresnel lenses left in the country

Tibbetts Point Lighthouse stands where Lake Ontario meets the St. Lawrence River in Cape Vincent.

The original went up in 1827, making it the oldest lighthouse in Jefferson County. The current tower dates to 1854 and rises 69 feet above the water.

Inside sits a Fresnel lens installed that same year, and it still works.

Only about 70 Fresnel lenses remain operational across the entire United States, and this is the only one still running on Lake Ontario. You can walk the grounds and use a telescope to scan the lake and river.

The harbor where Americans built 12 warships in one yard

Sackets Harbor sits on Lake Ontario’s shore and served as the hub of American military operations on the lake during the War of 1812. The U.S. built 12 warships in the harbor’s shipyard and stationed thousands of soldiers and sailors here.

On May 29, 1813, British and Canadian forces attacked and were driven back. The National Park Service ranks it among the top War of 1812 battle sites in the country.

Today, a 70-acre battlefield state historic site preserves the grounds, a restored Navy Yard and historic buildings.

That tangy pink dressing started right here

Thousand Island dressing traces back to this corner of northern New York.

The most common local story credits Sophia LaLonde, wife of a Clayton fishing guide, who mixed the dressing for shore dinners in the late 1800s.

Actress May Irwin tasted it on a fishing trip and passed the recipe to George Boldt at the Waldorf-Astoria. His head waiter put it on the menu, and it went national.

A second story says Boldt’s chef invented it on a boat after forgetting the salad dressing. You can sort through it all at the Thousand Islands Museum in Clayton.

Fish, raft and ski across 30 miles of free trails

The river and Lake Ontario hold bass, pike, muskie, perch, salmon and trout, so fishing pulls people here year-round. If you want faster water, whitewater rafting runs on the nearby Black River.

The Thousand Islands International Bridge connects the U.S. and Canada across Wellesley Island, and you get sweeping river views the whole way. President Franklin Roosevelt and Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King dedicated it in 1938.

The Thousand Islands Land Trust keeps more than 30 miles of public trails open year-round, free of charge. Winter brings cross-country skiing, snowshoeing and ice fishing.

Explore the Thousand Islands in northern New York

You’ll find the Thousand Islands region in far northern New York, about 300 miles from New York City and 80 miles north of Syracuse. Alexandria Bay and Clayton are the two main hub villages on the U.S. side.

Boldt Castle opens from mid-May through mid-October, and you reach it by tour boat or private watercraft. Singer Castle runs a similar seasonal schedule with boat tours from Alexandria Bay.

Wellesley Island State Park takes campsite reservations year-round, and the Antique Boat Museum in Clayton opens early May through late October.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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