Friday, July 09, 1999
For sale: Lake Erie island
Cincinnati man's property once bootlegger's hotel
BY ERIN GIBSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Cincinnati businessman Jake Sweeney Jr. has a Canadian island he wants to sell you — Middle Island, to be exact.
Once a hotbed of bootlegging and gambling, the now-peaceful Lake Erie abode will go to the highest bidder July 28 at an auction at the Holiday Inn Cleveland Airport.
Bidding starts at $585,000, and the Nature Conservancy of Canada announced Thursday that it would try to buy and preserve the isle “rich in ecological treasures.”
Mr. Sweeney bought the island in 1971and hasn't used it in years, said David Loper, president of Jake Sweeney Auto Leasing, Inc., who is handling the sale. Its only remaining man-made features are an airstrip and an aging, burned-out home with broken windows that was once a small hotel.
But the 43-acre paradise once had a lighthouse, hotel and casino, and Al Capone is rumored to have stashed some treasure on the peaceful isle, he said.
“It's got a lot of history to it,” Mr. Loper said.
The island is the southern most point in Canada, sitting between Kelleys Island and Pelee Island. At 41 degrees latitude, it's in line with Salt Lake City.
It's near the Ohio resort area Put-in-Bay, where Rattlesnake Island sold for almost $5 million to a group of investors last year, according to the Your Guide to Ontario Web site.
Rattlesnake is a private resort and had been developed somewhat before the sale, Mr. Loper said.
Similar development on Middle Island would be restricted by the Township of Pelee's official development plan, said Ron Tiessen, curator of the nearby Pelee Island Heritage Centre. Middle Island is part of the township.
Originally part of the French Territory, Middle Island came under British control in 1760. The island became part of Canada when it gained independence in 1867.
“It's symbolic for Canada, because it is the southernmost point,” Mr. Tiessen said. “This is where our country begins.”
Mr. Tiessen said an archaeological dig in the early 1980s unearthed pottery shards and other artifacts showing humans first inhabited the island between 500 B.C. and 1400 A.D.
It later was a stopover point for slaves escaping to Canada and for Civil War deserters. Shipwrecks off the island's coast starting in the 1840s prompted Europeans to build a lighthouse there. They finished the lighthouse and first lit its flame on Sept. 18, 1872.
One of the lighthouse keepers was Lemuel Brown, nephew of abolitionist John Brown of Harper's Ferry fame, Mr. Tiessen said. The lighthouse was abandoned in 1918, and the structure later burned to the ground.
Middle Island's infamy grew during Prohibition, when underworld booze runners turned the quiet isle into a hub for smuggling beer and liquor into Ohio from Canada, he said.
Gangster Joe Roscoe built a small, seven-bedroom hotel there with a casino in its basement, according to the Federation of Ontario Naturalists.
When Prohibition ended in 1933, vacationers and fishermen replaced gangsters in the hotel and on the island. The small hotel since has succumbed to vandals, the federation reported. Its windows have all been broken, and sparrows nest in its ceiling beams.
Jeff Reutter, director of Ohio State University's Stone Laboratory for Lake Erie research, said the island now is a popular spot to fish for smallmouth bass.
It's an important stop in birds' and butterflies' migration routes. Cormorants, birds that resemble black ducks, nest on the island in high numbers, he said.
The island's geography and its historical and educational value has earned it a designation as an Area of Natural and Scientific Interest by the Canadian Ministry of Natural Resources. The island also is listed on the Essex County, Canada, list of Environmentally Sensitive Areas.
John Grant, Ontario director of the Nature Conservancy of Canada, said his organization is raising money to buy the island and preserve it as a nature sanctuary and a living museum for scientific research.
“It's really an ecological gem,” Mr. Grant said.
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