While landing on the island brings swift legal consequences, admiring Deer Island from the water is completely legal. Under both federal admiralty law and the Public Trust Doctrine upheld by New York State, the waters of the Saint Lawrence River are public navigable waterways. The Russell Trust’s private ownership ends at the mean high-water mark along the shoreline.
Boaters, personal watercraft operators, and kayakers possess absolute rights to idle, drift, fish, and cruise the perimeter. You cannot tie a line to the docks, drive pilings into the shoreline, or stand on submerged rocks that sit above the legal water line. Commercial Thousand Islands boat tours departing from Alexandria Bay routinely steer within a couple hundred yards of the western shore, narrating the island's collegiate ties to tourists en route to neighboring landmarks.
