Fort Montgomery (Lake Champlain) (Rouses Point, Champlain, Clinton County, New York)
Rouses Point, Champlain, Clinton County · New York · Civil War era
History & Significance
Fort Montgomery was the second of two United States forts built at the northernmost point of Lake Champlain; the first, unnamed fort built in 1816, had been disassembled after engineers realized it was on Canadian territory, but the border was realigned in 1842, prompting construction of the second fortification in 1844. The fort was named in honor of Major General Richard Montgomery, a Revolutionary War soldier killed at Quebec City during the 1775 invasion of Canada.
Built between 1844 and 1871 at Island Point in Rouses Point, New York, the stone fortification featured walls 48 feet high and gun emplacements for 125 cannon on three tiers. The fort was one of only nine examples in the United States with a moat, making it essentially surrounded by water and accessible only by a retractable drawbridge from the land side.
A detachment of the 14th U.S. Infantry was garrisoned there for three months in 1862 due to concerns of British intervention in the Civil War; these fears proved partly justified when the St. Albans Raid occurred nearby in 1864. After the United States sold the fort at public auction in 1926, locals removed lumber, bricks, and building materials; by 1936–1937 most of the fort was demolished, with its massive stones crushed and dumped into the lake as fill for the nearby bridge between New York and Vermont.
Key Facts
Map
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🧳 Visiting
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Montgomery_(Lake_Champlain)
- https://diviner.clintoncountyhistorical.org/archive-item/fort-montgomery/
- https://museum.dmna.ny.gov/forts/montgomery
- https://passageport.org/places-to-go/fort-montgomery/
- https://www.townofchamplain.gov/explore
- https://vermonthistory.org/fort-montgomery