Today, Fort Ticonderoga and Fort William Henry have proudly come back to life. Standing proudly at opposite ends of Lake George, this elegant body of spring-fed water cradled in the foothills of the Adirondacks, they remain a vivid reminder of a different time. In their original incarnations, each fort was short-lived, constructed, attacked by large armies, and destroyed or abandoned over a short span of years in the 1750s. Fort Ti was not restored and opened to the public until 1909 and Fort William Henry in 1957.

Although conveniently connected today by a Eurotunnel and reasonably peaceable towards one another, England and France fought over 20 various wars with each other from the early Middle Ages on until Napoleon was finally exiled to St. Helena in 1815. One of the last of these, known in Europe as the Seven Years War (1756-1763) spilled over into America, and particularly into upstate New York, by the name we know it as here in the states, “The French & Indian War.”            

With control below Quebec of New York’s Champlain Valley, in 1755, the French built a fort they named “Carillon” on the strip of land separating Lake Champlain from Lake George at its northern end known by the Indians as “Ticonderoga”. The English met the challenge by erecting Fort William Henry 32 miles away at the southern end of Lake George. Lake George, remote and unsettled, now became a wilderness waterway between the sentinel forts of two contentious European kings.

Given this set-up, you would expect all hell to break loose – and it did. Massive fleets of wooden bateaux transport large armies led by generals of varying competence and degrees of success. The Brits tried first under Abercrombie and Lord George Howe, the latter a brave 33-year-old Brigadier who died leading a charge against a French position outside Fort Ti. Abercrombie, in spite of having a vastly superior force, turned tail and went back to his fort.

The following year General Montcalm returned the favor in spades, leaving William Henry in ashes until its 20th century resurrection. A year later, General Amherst captured Fort Ti which remained in British hands until the Great Jehovah inspired Ethan Allen to turn it over to the Green Mountain Boys at the start of the Revolution. The Fort stayed in local hands for a couple of years until Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne came through and the Brits briefly took over until he got his butt kicked down the road at Saratoga. With the British retreating to a Canadian presence and the French retreating to France there was no further need for Fort Ti so it crumbled until modern folk put the pieces together and restored it.