Expedition Team: Jacque Kelly, Nick Kelly, Dave Miller, Rosie Miller
Expedition Date: August 2017
Many of you have visited the history & the mystery of this castle. We first saw “Chateau Laroche” as we kayaked down the scenic Little Miami River. Instead of bringing our own we rented kayaks at Loveland Canoe & Kayak. We began eight miles upriver from Loveland and kayaked on a beautiful summer day. After a couple of hours we saw a portion of a medieval castle semi-hidden by the trees. We kayaked over to the bank and hopped out.
There it was this stone replica of a tenth-century Norman-style European Castle. World War I survivor Harry Andrews (who had an IQ of 189) began building the castle in 1929 and almost single-handedly completed 99% of the castle when he died in 1981 at age 91. He started the Knights of the Golden Trail, a sort of boy scout/Sunday school class. Teaching young men to live by good ethics, morals & the Ten Commandments, the Knights are caretakers of the castle today.
Andrews built the castle using 56,000 loads of rocks in five gallon pails taken from the Little Miami River and 32,000 buckets of concrete. Harry lived in the castle, working on it daily until he died. The quaint old castle definitely alludes European charm. There are several paranormal claims associated with the castle so see our investigation writeup (under the Paranormal category) that we did two months later.
After a brief stop at the castle, we ate some cliff bars and hoped back into kayaks to finish our journey.