The Globe and Mail

Where the jagged edges of the Canadian Shield punctuate the world's longest navigable inland waterway, U.S. industrial magnates of the 19th century built a summer playground of whimsical palaces and cozy cottage communities. These are the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence, actually about 1,800 individual bumps of rocky land jutting above the river and blurring the borderline between Canada and the United States for an 80-kilometre stretch east of Kingston, Ont., and Cape Vincent, N.Y. In this photo essay, a Canadian landscape photographer teams up with an American local history buff to tell the stories behind the archipelago's castles and grandiose country homes of "millionaires' row," now admired every summer by boatloads of tourists. Building in the area exploded in the "Rush of '72" -- that's 1872 -- after railway-car tycoon George Pullman entertained president Ulysses S. Grant and two celebrated Civil War generals at his island summer home just as a national convention of newspaper editors was being held at a nearby hotel.