The 24 June 1916 Motion Picture News reported that director Henry Otto and a company of actors were presently filming One Cylinder Sam (the working title) in the Thousand Islands, near the American border in Ontario, Canada. Because of the unseasonable coolness, actors were "obliged to turn polar bears, swim in the icy water, and absorb the spray from racing motor boats." Two weeks later, the 8 July 1916 issue of the same magazine detailed how inclement weather had slowed down production: "During the players' stay at Clayton, N.Y., rain fell for six consecutive days. And on most of the days when it was not actually raining it was either too misty or too cloudy to take pictures." This forced the company to travel to various locations along the St. Lawrence River and shoot "when the sun broke through the clouds. In this manner director Otto managed to obtain five or six scenes a day." Another item in the same magazine noted that the company was stranded all night on an island during a storm. Among Otto's company, in unknown positions, were Stanley Mason, James Sweeny, and Ben H. Grimm.
       The River of Romance was the first film of the Yorke Film Corp., "a newly organized producing company, of which [veteran director] Fred J. Balshofer is president," according to the 17 June 1916 Motion Picture News. Balsofer told the 21 July 1917 Moving Picture World that his policy with Yorke was to make films from popular novels. He and stars Harold Lockwood and May Allison—who were paired as romantic leads in over half a dozen films—had previously been with Quality Pictures. (Lockwood would die from the Spanish influenza two years later.)
       E. J. Rath was the joint pseudonym of Edith Rathbone Jacobs Brainerd and her husband, J. Chauncey Corey Brainerd, who would later, in 1922, be killed together, along with nearly 200 others, in the collapse of the roof of the Knickerbocker Theatre in Washington, D.C.
       According to the Library of Congress American Silent Feature Film Survival Database, this film is extant.