Upstate Fort With Long History Offers New Ways to View It

Fort Ticonderoga has educated and entertained visitors for decades with exhibits, fife-and-drum performances and cannon and musket demonstrations.

Now the historic site overlooking Lake Champlain in New York’s eastern Adirondack Mountains has two more attractions: a trail along America’s bloodiest pre-Civil War battleground and cruises on a boat called the Carillon. The cruises provide a soldier’s-eye view of the fort that was once key to controlling the region.

As a narrator on board provides local history, the Carillon gives passengers a perspective of the fort that scouts for the British would have seen while conducting forays by canoe around lakeside French positions during the French and Indian War (1754-63). And they can get a feel for what Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys faced as they rowed across the lake from the Vermont side to seize the fortification from the redcoats in the opening weeks of the American Revolution (1775-83).

Up on land, the Carillon Battlefield Trail, opened in 2013, winds 1.7 miles through a nearby forest where the fort’s vastly outnumbered French defenders beat back a British-led attack on July 8, 1758. Grass-covered, tree-shaded earthen embankments trace the location of zigzagging log-and-earthen barricades the French built just in time to repulse waves of redcoats, including the famed Scottish Black Watch, which suffered hundreds of casualties.

The British and Colonial American troops suffered nearly 2,000 casualties, including 550 killed, while the number of French killed and wounded was around 440. It remained the bloodiest battle fought on U.S. soil until the Civil War Battle of Antietam.

During the Revolution, American troops defending the fort rebuilt the outer defenses, following what was known as the “old French lines.” It’s the nation’s largest surviving intact system of fortifications built during the American Revolution, according to Matthew Keagle, the fort’s curator.

Fort Ticonderoga changed hands six times in less than 20 years during the two 18th-century wars. Abandoned in the 19th century and left to ruin, the property was bought by the Pell family, who reconstructed the fort and opened it as a tourist destination in 1909.

Today, the fort and surrounding landscape look much like they did to the troops who waged war from stone ramparts and woodland trails.

“That’s what I like about Lake Champlain: You can really envision the 18th-century history because it hasn’t been overdeveloped,” said Russell Bellico, a retired professor who has written several books about the region’s nautical history.

While the fort also serves as a museum for one of the largest collections of Colonial-era military artifacts, its emphasis has shifted from static exhibits to interpretations of daily life for soldiers in this 18th century wilderness outpost. Employees in period uniforms still conduct daily musket firing demonstrations, but this season they’re showing visitors how soldiers lived at the fort in 1777, a pivotal year in the American Revolution that saw the British defeated at Saratoga, 60 miles away.

Admission to the fort includes access to the top of Mount Defiance, looming over the lake’s western shore just south of the fort. In July 1777, the British hauled cannons up the unguarded mountain. The threat of bombardment prompted the Americans to abandon the fort.

This article appeared in print on page 33 of the July 6th, 2016 edition of Hamodia.