I’m a descendant of the McLeans. Emilie Delphine Robb of New York granted Zavikon to Andrew McLean of Passaic, New Jersey on June 27, 1918. Andrew was a cotton goods manufacturer. He died in March 26, 1931. His property was then divided among his children. On August 22, 1931 they sold Zavikon to Philip A. Castner of Philadelphia. The Great Depression caused the McLeans to end the family’s business and sell Zavikon!
I’m always pleased when something on this site enables a little connection like this that didn’t exist before.
Today Neatorama linked to a photo purporting to show two islands linked by a foot bridge in the Thousand Islands region of Ontario:
the island on the left is in canada, the one on the right is in the united states. the smaller island contains the ‘backyard’ of the house on the larger island.
That would be cool, if only it were true. There was debate about the veracity of this in the comments, and a couple of commenters cited Wikipedia:
There is a pair of islands near Rockport called Zavikon. A popular tale among local guides is that the bigger part of Zavikon is in Canada, while the smaller part is in the USA, and the foot bridge between them is the “shortest international bridge in the world”. In fact Zavikon is in Canada.
I’m a casual contributor to Wikipedia, so I thought I’d go try to disprove this myth-busting fact. It took a few minutes with Google Maps, but here’s a satellite photo of the islands that maps accurately to to this aerial view.
This supports Wikipedia’s statement, that both islands are a couple of hundred meters inside the Canadian side of the border. So, it’s a myth that Zavikon’s foot bridge is the shortest bridge across an international border. I wonder what is?
And yes, I’m a massive pedant.
UPDATE: As per the comments below, Richard provided a link to this short video from 1929, depicting his ancestors on the island:
