Shutter Island does not exist; there are no Shutter Islands in the entire United States, nor am I aware of any insane asylums that have ever existed on isolated American islands. There have been a number of prison or detention islands, though none quite resembled the fictional Shutter Island physically.

The last unbridged prison island in the US is McNeil Island, Washington. It houses both a large state prison complex, and a program of civil detention for sexual predators, who are essentially being confined as mentally ill.

Steep-sided, flat-topped, gloomy islands like the one in the movie are relatively rare. For physical similarity, one might go with Anacapa, in the Channel Islands of California:

(Anacapa image courtesy Scubacayman88, Flickr)

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They restate Volcan Point’s claim inaccurately; it is not the largest (as I’ve noted), but is the largest — and only — volcanic triple. We should also note that Taal is regularly active, and will destroy this whole geographic construction some day, possibly soon.

My (very) small claim to fame in this regard is that I have probably been to more triple islands than anyone, on Glover Island, the large island in Grand Lake, Newfoundland. I carried an inflatable boat with which to explore the islands on it, and camped on one of the 17 or so in that lake. (I’ve never heard of another person actually sleeping on an island on an island on an island; the one in the Philippines is unsuitable, and the other Canadian ones are even more isolated.)

People like to say that Ryan Island on Isle Royale is the “largest island on the largest lake on the largest island on the largest lake in the world.” With all those qualifiers, this statement seems to be true.

These includes the largest islands of DC – all the islands of DC, actually – and pages for all named islands, including Columbia Island, East Potomac Park, Heritage Island, Kingman Island, Little Island, Theodore Roosevelt Island, and the Three Sisters Islands.

(Picture copyright WorldIslandInfo.com — usable with attribution and link.)

Alaska is extremely well-supplied with islands, with more large islands than any other state, and more island acreage than any other state, even Hawaii.

Alaska pages now include:

• Alaska island superlatives
• largest islands of Alaska

(Image copyright WorldIslandInfo.com — usable with attribution and link)

They are:

• the Maldives, in the Indian Ocean
• Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Carteret Islands (off PNG), and Majuro Atoll (Marshall Islands) in the Pacific
• Lamu and Pate, Kenyan coastal islands
• Bhola, in southern Bangladesh
• Key West, off southern Florida

“Soon” is a relative term here–many of these places would still be inhabitable for decades, under current sea-level rise forecasts.

The Pacific islands involve relatively small numbers of people; they could actually be moved, though this would involve irreparable cultural destruction. Bangladesh illustrates another level of impact: millions of people live on these low-lying islands, and tens of millions in vulnerable coastal areas.

This is of course a tiny part of the problem; hundreds of thousands of islands are in danger of disappearing or greatly shrinking in the face of sea-level rise.

(Thanks to Stu Gagnon for the tip.)

Image: Maldives from space, courtesy NASA

1. Long I., NY –1401
2. Marsh I., LA — 117
3. Mount Desert I., ME — 106
4. Martha’s Vineyard. MA — 97
5. Merritt I., FL — 93 (boundaries debatable)
6. Saint James I., FL — 79 (partially riverine)
7. Johns I., SC — 75
8. Matagorda I., TX – c. 71
9. Port Royal I., SC — 70
10. Saint Helena I., SC — 59
11. Staten I., NY — 58.7
12. Point Au Fer I., LA — 58
13. Edisto I., SC — 54

These include the:

• largest American island
• tallest American island
• highest American island
• largest American lake island
• most heavily populated American island
• most common name for American islands

At the south end, at Hains Point, The Awakening, a huge metal sculpture of a giant rising from the earth, has been sold and will be taken away. Washington’s islands will lose one of their most interesting sights.

At the north tip, the Post now reports that parts of the Jefferson Memorial are suffering from subsidence, as areas of the complex sink into the mud that underlies the entire construction. (The island was built up about a century ago out of the Potomac.)

The reservoir is in hilly country, with a large, almost pyramidal building near it, probably just above the dam. A cast member said, probably referring to this spot, that it was “down in Orange County,” in Southern California.

[movie locations, filming locations]

I was looking at the lovely new Geology of the San Francisco Bay Region, a guidebook by Doris Sloan, and noticed such an island about 20 miles off Point Reyes, northwest of the city.

Between 18,000 and 14,000 years ago, the rising ocean cut off a hill on the coastal plain, forming an island. Animals would have become stranded there, and over the next few thousand years some might have begun to evolve in their isolation. But the island continued to shrink, and by 11,500 years ago had been reduced to a few small islets. They submerged by 10,500 years ago, and the life of the place came to an end.

The remains of the island can still be seen, as Cordell Bank, where divers swim amidst the pinnacles that were the last remains of the island before it was gone.

[geology]