Skip to main content

1000 Islands Tower


I pass through the Thousand Islands often enough where I've become fairly acquainted with the lay of the land and the places that dot the landscape. It is certainly a majestic and wonderful place to visit. However, every time I would cross the border into the United States or to Canada, I pass by a tall tower just north of the border into Ontario. During one of my trips back to Upstate New York from Ontario, I decided to check out the tower and see the Thousand Islands from a different angle. That tower is known as the 1000 Islands Tower.


Towering some 400 feet, or 130 meters, the 1000 Islands Tower sits on its perch on Hill Island. The tower is generally open from May to October, and after paying the admission fee, you can head up the elevator to the observation decks to get a bird's eye view of the area. The tower is currently owned by a couple who are originally from Germany, but fell in love with the Thousand Islands when they were vacationing in the area. They loved the idea of the 1000 Islands Tower as a landmark, and when the opportunity arose, they purchased the tower.

From the tower, a view of the Ivy Lea Bridge, which is the northern bridge spanning the Canadian mainland with Hill Island, can easily be spotted from the sky deck, along with other various islands on both the American and Canadian sides of the border. Let's take a look at what we can see, shall we?

The Ivy Lea Bridge, which is the northernmost of the bridges owned and operated by the Thousand Islands Bridge Authority. The bridges opened to traffic in 1938.
Ontario King's Highway 137, which runs from Ontario King's Highway 401 to the United States border and Interstate 81.

Some small islands in the Thousand Islands. Some of the islands are only big enough for one house, if that.

A little wider view of the Thousand Islands looking west. The west end of Hill Island is straight ahead, with Wallace Island to the right, along with some smaller islands. Gananoque, Ontario is in the distance, somewhere.

Looking towards the south, you will see a bit of a rift between the islands to the right of the picture. That is part of the international boundary between Hill Island in Ontario and Wellesley Island in New York State.

The northernmost exit of I-81 to DeWolf Point State Park on Wellesley Island. The customs plaza is hiding somewhere in the trees. If you look in the distance, you can see the southern Thousand Islands Bridge crossing between Wellesley Island and Collins Landing on the mainland of New York State.

Alexandria Bay, New York is in the distance.
There are informational plaques around the observational skydeck. There's apparently not quite a thousand islands that make up the Thousand Islands region.

Another look at the Thousand Islands, this time looking east. Somewhere amongst these islands, Thousand Islands dressing was invented.

One final look at the Ivy Lea Bridge before I headed back into the United States.

A nice parting shot of the Thousand Islands. I hope you enjoyed your visit to the 1000 Islands Tower.


How to Get There:


Sources and Links:
1000 Islands Tower - Simply Breathtaking Views
Ontario Travel - 1000 Islands Tower
Visit 1000 Islands - 1000 Islands Tower

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Old River Lock & Control Structure (Lettsworth, LA)

  The Old River Control Structure (ORCS) and its connecting satellite facilities combine to form one of the most impressive flood control complexes in North America. Located along the west bank of the Mississippi River near the confluence with the Red River and Atchafalaya River nearby, this structure system was fundamentally made possible by the Flood Control Act of 1928 that was passed by the United States Congress in the aftermath of the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 however a second, less obvious motivation influenced the construction here. The Mississippi River’s channel has gradually elongated and meandered in the area over the centuries, creating new oxbows and sandbars that made navigation of the river challenging and time-consuming through the steamboat era of the 1800s. This treacherous area of the river known as “Turnbull’s Bend” was where the mouth of the Red River was located that the upriver end of the bend and the Atchafalaya River, then effectively an outflow

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

  Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third

California State Route 203 the proposed Minaret Summit Highway

California State Route 203 is an approximately nine-mile State Highway located near Mammoth Lakes in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Mono County.  California State Route 203 as presently configured begins at US Route 395, passes through Mammoth Lakes and terminates at the Madera County line at Minaret Summit.  What is now California State Route 203 was added to the State Highway System in 1933 as Legislative Route Number 112.  The original Mammoth Lakes State Highway ended at Lake Mary near the site of Old Mammoth and was renumbered to California State Route 203 in 1964.  The modern alignment of the highway to Minaret Summit was adopted during 1967.   The corridor of Minaret Summit and Mammoth Pass have been subject to numerous proposed Trans-Sierra Highways.  The first corridor was proposed over Mammoth Pass following a Southern Pacific Railroad survey in 1901.  In 1931 a corridor between the Minarets Wilderness and High Sierra Peaks Wilderness was reserved by the Forest Service for po