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hat Clayton, New York lacks in population it more than makes up for in history, culture and natural beauty. This picturesque village of 2,000 is perched atop a peninsula on the mighty St. Lawrence River, along the world-famous Thousand Islands. Its harbor is home to ships, yachts, St. Lawrence skiffs and antique wooden boats with whimsical names like Gadfly, Zipper and Pardon Me. Classic wooden boats and boatbuilding is a major part of this region’s waterscape. Restored antique boats such as Chris-Crafts, Hutchinsons, Lymans and Gar Woods are common sights along these spectacular shores. Not to mention powerboats, freighters, skiffs, canoes, tall ships, ferries, kayaks and sailboats. But antique boats and the love affair with them are a big part of what make Clayton such a special place, rich in culture and teeming with history of bygone eras.
Venice of America
Clayton is a nautical town nestled on a storied stretch of the St. Lawrence River. Its location along the eastern edge of Lake Ontario overlooking the river makes it a prime destination in the Thousand Islands, which includes a total of 1,865 islands between Cape Vincent and Morristown, New York, across from Kingston and Brockville in eastern Ontario. It’s hard to ignore Clayton’s heritage when you explore this river town. The St. Lawrence hugs the village’s shoreline, offering a spectacular vista of boats and ships gliding past islands. “It is known as the ‘Venice of America,’” says artist Michael Ringer, a renowned sculptor and painter who owns Michael Ringer’s St. Lawrence Gallery in Clayton. “Everything is about boating here.” The international headquarters for the Antique and Classic Boat Society (ACBS), the largest society in the world dedicated to the preservation and enjoyment of classic wooden boats, is based in Clayton. The village became a summer resort for the rich and famous when America’s wealthiest business barons discovered this cottage colony more than a century ago. You don’t have to go too far to see reminders of the Gilded Age in the 1880s and early 1900s. Take a stroll along the main street, Riverside Drive, and you’ll see remnants of one of the region’s first castles on Calumet Island. Tobacco tycoon Charles Emery, of New York’s American Tobacco Co., built the castle retreat on Calumet Island in 1894, directly across from Clayton. It later succumbed to a fire, but its original 82-foot water tower still stands, along with its original boathouse and caretaker residence. Fame first befell this region more than a century ago, when a well-publicized 1872 visit to the Thousand Islands by U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant put this place in the international spotlight. Grant was hosted by George Pullman, who manufactured the Pullman railway sleeping car. The industrialist built Castle Rest, a castle on Pullman Island in an area dubbed Millionaire’s Row, located just off Alexandria Bay.
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LAKELANDBOATING.COM
| may 2014
sunset photo by ian coristine ; kon - tiki photy by michael folsom