Thousand Islands National Park area to defend the British from American invasion. Inside the park, Cedar Island, a small island visible from downtown Kingston, Ontario, is the site of a Martello tower named Cathcart Tower. The park was established in 1904, the first Canadian national park east of the Rocky Mountains. It was called "St. Lawrence Islands National Park" until 2013, when it was renamed to "Thousand Islands National Park" to reflect the natural area in the name. In 1997, the park was named one of the national parks with the highest levels of ecological impairment. Animals that inhabit this national park are coyotes,
Thousand Islands in the mid-1990s with the arrival of zebra mussels, which feed on algae. The water is so clear in some areas that a rocky bottom can be observed in of water. The area has several shipwrecks, and although most of them are over underwater, some are a mere down and can be seen from the surface. Prior to European colonization, the Thousand Islands region was home to, or visited by, members of the Iroquois Confederacy and Ojibwa people. Their name for the islands was "Manitouana" or the "Garden of the Great Spirit". The region was a part of the War