Alexandria Bay Live Cam, Thousand Islands, NY

In January, the village dock on Upper James Street in Alexandria Bay can sit empty above a frozen St. Lawrence River. By July, the same slips are full of runabouts, tour boats are loading for Boldt Castle and freighters slide past the islands offshore. The Alexandria Bay live cam follows the whole year from two angles in Alexandria Bay, Jefferson County, New York, in the Thousand Islands: a Docks view over the village waterfront and a River view out over the St. Lawrence. Both feeds sit with the other New York State webcams on the site.

Summer on the docks: May to September

The Docks view is the one to check before driving or boating into “Alex Bay,” as locals call it. The James Street dock is first come, first served, with no reservations, and the Village of Alexandria Bay’s dock rules allow free docking for up to 4 hours, then $2 an hour until 9 p.m. Overnight boats pay $2 per foot. There is no water or electricity at the slips, but the restrooms stay open 24 hours. Sightseeing cruises through the islands and shuttles to Heart Island leave from the waterfront through the day from May to October.

From the dock it is a short ride to Heart Island and Boldt Castle, the six-story stone house that hotelier George Boldt began in 1900 for his wife, Louise. Work stopped in early 1904, when she died, and Boldt never went back. Boldt, who ran the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, is also often credited with spreading Thousand Island dressing, which the region claims as its own. The Thousand Islands Bridge Authority bought the island and the nearby yacht house in 1977 for one dollar, and more than $50 million has gone into the castle and its outbuildings since. The Boldt Yacht House, across the channel on Wellesley Island, is the only wooden yacht house of its kind left and has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1978.

Heart Island is a U.S. port of entry, with a Customs and Border Protection office on site, so visitors who arrive by boat from the Canadian side need identification to land.

The river view: freighters, tour boats and 1,864 islands

The River view looks out over the St. Lawrence, which forms the border between the United States and Canada through the Thousand Islands. The archipelago counts 1,864 islands, a figure that only includes land that stays above water all year and supports living trees. On the Canadian side, Thousand Islands National Park, created in 1904 as St. Lawrence Islands National Park, was the first Canadian national park east of the Rocky Mountains.

Alexandria Bay sits on the American Narrows, one of the tightest stretches of the St. Lawrence Seaway, so lake freighters and ocean-going ships pass close to the village between late March and late December. A ship on the River view is usually heading up to the Great Lakes or down toward Montreal and the Atlantic. The Seaway opened in 1959, and the biggest ships that fit its locks are about 740 feet long, so the largest lakers on the stream can fill most of the frame.

If the River view is quiet, the Thousand Islands Bridge cam a few miles upriver watches the suspension bridge that has linked New York and Ontario since President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King opened it on August 18, 1938.

Fall and winter on the St. Lawrence

Boat traffic thins out after the Boldt Castle season closes in mid-October, usually after the long Columbus Day weekend, and the dock becomes a quieter spot for watching fall color on the islands and the last freighters before the Seaway shuts for winter. In a cold January the river can freeze near the village, and the live stream shows ice where the slips were full a few months earlier.

About 30 miles south on Interstate 81, the Public Square Watertown webcam covers the center of Watertown, the county seat of Jefferson County and the closest city to Alexandria Bay. Fort Drum, home of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division, sits just outside Watertown.

Pirate Days and the next season

Every August, the village holds Bill Johnston’s Pirate Days, named after the river pirate who burned the Canadian steamer Sir Robert Peel near Wellesley Island in 1838. Johnston later served as keeper of the Rock Island lighthouse, a few miles upriver. The festival stages a mock pirate invasion of the waterfront, so the Docks view is the place to watch the boats come in. Boldt Castle reopens in mid-May, and the first warm weekends of the season fill the James Street dock again. Until then, our live cams worldwide cover beaches and harbors where summer is already under way.