Thousand Islands National Park: landscape and origins
Thousand Islands is a small park with many parts: islands and islets in the St. Lawrence River, plus three properties on the mainland.
According to the park authority, the park comprises 19 to 26 islands and 80 to 90 islets between Kingston and Brockville, plus several properties on the mainland.
Its position on the Frontenac Arch makes the park one of the most species-rich in Canada. The islands form a chain of stepping stones across the river and shorten the distances between the land masses, a corridor between the Adirondacks and Algonquin Park. The park authority measures the health of forest, wetland and streams with fifteen ecological indicators.
Among the most common animals by the water are ospreys, northern map turtles, mink, great blue herons and white-tailed deer. On a single day, 102 bird species were identified on Grenadier Island; the St. Lawrence moderates the climate enough for northern species such as the common loon to meet southern ones like the turkey vulture.
People have come here in summer since the end of the last Ice Age. In 1979 a diver off Grenadier Island found a clay pot of the Point Peninsula culture, which lived about 2,500 years ago. French accounts from the 17th century describe summer camps with hundreds of people, including Onondaga, and a large eel fishery between Mallorytown Landing and Ivy Lea. European families settled after 1784; from the 1860s fish stocks declined. Today the park carries out research together with the Mohawks of Akwesasne.
The park in numbers
- Established
- 1904, as St. Lawrence Islands
- Distinction
- first national park east of the Rockies
- Islands
- 19 to 26, depending on how they are counted
- Islets
- 80 to 90
- Mainland
- three properties on the Parkway
- Map points
- 22 with published coordinates
- Trails
- 12 km Jones Creek, 7 km Landon Bay, 2 km Mallorytown
- oTENTiks
- 10 on two islands and on the mainland
- Tent sites
- 28 reservable, 32 first come, first served
- Biosphere reserve
- Frontenac Arch, UNESCO since 2002
- Species at risk
- 10 reptiles and amphibians
- Birds
- 102 species in one day on Grenadier
