Water. It gives life, adds beauty to the scenery, and it’s great to kayak on. But, when it comes at you in a 40 foot high wall…you’re doomed.
Earlier this summer, we visited the National Park Service’s Johnstown Flood Memorial, and viewed the terrifying video which begins and ends, in otherworldly detail, with images and narration centering around the Grandview Cemetery, where many of the 2,209 victims who were confronted with a deadly wall of water on May 31, 1889 found their final resting place.
On later visit to Johnstown, we decided to visit the cemetery and pay our respects to those victims. We expected some sort of interpretation (a brochure maybe?) to be available, but since none was, we drove around until we found a sizable (over 700 it turns out) number of small white unmarked graves.
That many plain white gravestones with no inscriptions is rather unnerving, but also mesmerizing. I found I had to break my eyes away from their undulating pattern. After viewing the mass site from various angles, we walked around to see where other victims might be buried.
We found whole families of known victims, which was also disturbing. Seeing the same death date on five or six family members’ gravestones brings that day of horror home.
The water tooketh away. From this vantagepoint in history, we can only imagine the reality — as with many disasters, man made or natural. (The Johnstown Flood was some of both). And honor those who were lost.
Monument marking the unidentified victims of the Johnstown Flood buried at Grandview.Most of the Hochstein family met their demise on that fateful day. … as did the Hoffmans.Although bodies kept turning up according to one account as far away as Cincinnati and as late as 1901, some were never recovered at all.
During a recent visit to the farthest north portion of New York State, our old high school buddy Elaine, her friend Gordy, and my trusty travel companion Debi and I took a scenic boat tour of the “American channel” of the St. Lawrence Seaway. One achieves such a tour from the small tourist town of Alexandria Bay, on an Uncle Sam excursion vessel.
First off, getting reliable information about these boat tours is not an easy task. Both Gordy and I called them and got no or very misleading information. (Maybe it is “due to COVID” but customer service is not what it used to be, it seems.) We decided to just show up and get the story from the horse’s mouth, and ended up on a two-hour narrated tour, well worth the mild anxiety of not being able to really plan ahead. Hey, we had nowhere else to be and it was a superb day, so whatever.
This excursion ends up with a trip to Boldt Castle, a humongous stone estate which takes up its own small island. (One could also take a different trip to Singer Castle, but that is a whole other story and maybe trip in the future.) The story of the “castle” is a sad and terribly romantic one.
Mr. Boldt, an enormously wealthy sort of guy, was building the summer getaway for his wife when she suddenly (and we would guess unexpectedly) died. Though apparently she had tuberculosis, so how unexpected could death from that disease have been in the early 1900s? Nevertheless, there is was. Dream vacation home tragically scuttled.
Over three hundred workmen, including many a skilled stone and woodworker who had hoped for a long and fruitful employment completing this project, were immediately commanded to put down their tools and cease their labors.
The unfinished castle was left to the elements, and the vandals, within swimming distance of Alexandria Bay. (Well if you are a strong swimmer; at least within tantalizing view from shore, and a short row, paddle or motoring in any kind of water craft, or even a walk on the ice back in the day when the river froze over in the harsh winters.)
In the mid-1970s, after over 70 years of neglect and ruination, it was decided that the castle should be completed and opened for tourists. The Thousand Island Bridge Commission accomplished this feat, and today for a reasonable fee of about $12 you can take a self-guided tour.
The signage is all couched in “would haves” since this reconstruction is based on what the property would have been like had the ill-fated Louisa lived and held forth as mistress and hostess of the grand home, garden, and “children’s playhouse” (a separate big old stone edifice with a bowling alley, etc.).
The whole effect created very mixed emotions on my part, and I am sure on the part of many others who tour the house and property. Sad that Louisa and her family and friends never got to enjoy the sumptuous estate. Glad that the Bridge Commission did such a good job of reconstruction and interpretation. Mad that vandals had defaced and disrespected the property (which is still evident on the unfinished third floor).
It was a worthy adventure, if unsettling in many ways. Here are some photos that tell some more of the story.
Approach to the Castle. The Island is called Heart (formerly Hart) Island; Boldt apparently wanted to restructure the whole island in the shape of a heart but didn’t quite accomplish this. The Children’s Playhouse. Not totally restored but you can see where the bowling alleys were and get a sense that these kids had quite a playhouse indeed!Louisa’s bedroom and sitting room on the second floor opened up to a balcony overlooking the gardens and water. It “would have” been a lovely retreat for one very rich lady, but not to be…Unfinished and very ghostly third floor where generations of curious visitors left their marks. I suppose they felt it was not hurting anyone in this abandoned shell, and it is a sort of historic record maybe. But just sad anyhow.
