Crown Point State Historic Site
This is one of our favorite places. In this day and age, just about every colonial-era fort has been rebuilt. If you’re lucky, at least some portion of it is original. Fort Ticonderoga, for instance, was rebuilt around the crumbling ruins of barracks. Fort Stanwix was completely rebuilt. There are merits to each of these, but nothing compares to the authentic ruins of the old British Fort at Crown Point and its neighbor, the excavated French Fort St. Frederic.
The Fort at Crown Point was, at the time it was built during the last of the so-called French and Indian Wars, the largest British fort in North America. It was built to command a narrow section of Lake Champlain about 12 miles north of Fort Ticonderoga. Its size and location made it a perfect rendezvous place to launch British campaigns against the French in Canada. Besides a sizable garrison, large quantities of supplies and provisions could be stored here. An accidental fire burned the barracks and other outbuildings, leaving just the stone walls of two long barracks intact. The fort was abandoned, but its ruins were used by both the American and British armies during the American Revolution – a good invasion staging point was a good invasion staging point.
The ruins are lonely reminders of what once was. The open rooms can be explored – the doors, ceilings, roofs, windows, and hoists for the second floor have all disappeared; victims of the fire. The locations of windows, hoists, etc. can be relatively easily discerned, as can the fireplaces that warmed each room. Its easy to imagine living there in a remote, inhospitable place. Surrounded by forests on one side and an enormous lake on the other, it was at once a beautiful and lonely locale. You can’t shake the feeling that the loneliness must have been soul-crushing for soldiers in garrison.
The main feature of the British fort is not the ruins of the barracks, but the sheer size and scope of the earthen ruins. The earthworks are almost completely intact, though some measures have been taken to reinforce sections to prevent them from falling. Missing, of course, is the timber interior and exterior curtain walls that would embrace and hold in the earth. The entire complex of earthworks can be walked and the different elements of a fort’s works can be easily discerned – including the ditch and glacis.
The much smaller Fort St. Frederic has a stone exterior curtain wall, a significant portion of which is visible. The most active archaeological work is being done on this fort. Its former works are plainly discernable, including the citadel, which housed cannon on multiple floors. The fort was constructed about 1731 and was the launching point of French-allied raids during King George’s War and the French and Indian War until the French were forced to abandon it.
The grounds offer an attractive venue, with gorgeous views of the lake, the forts, and the Adirondack Mountains. There are picnic tables and the lake shoreline is accessible for a pleasant walk.
This is a must-visit site with no admission fee. The grounds are well kept and the forts are a nice escape from the touristy forts in the area like Ticonderoga and William Henry. The latter have their appeal, but when it comes down to it, authenticity reigns at Crown Point.
