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Fort Ticonderoga
Ticonderoga, NY 12883
(518) 585-2821
The French started building the fort at Ticonderoga in 1755 and they called it Carillon. It commanded Lake Champlain, which formed the most important part of the great waterway connecting New York and Canada. It also commanded the portage to Lake George. Therefore, whoever held it controlled the waterway between Canada and the American colonies. Three nations have held the fort: France, Great Britain and the United States. It was attacked six times and fell three. The other three times it was successfully held - a record no other fort in this country can approach.
The fort is four sided with pointed spurs, called bastions, jutting out from its corners. Two outer works, called demi-lunes - one to the north, the other to the west - further guard it. On the south side there is an outer wall giving further protection in that direction. The British built this great South Wall sometime after 1759. On the plateau below the South Wall lay the remains of the French village that formed part of the settlement at the Carillon. The French destroyed it when they abandoned the fort in 1759. The West Barracks, originally used as an officers quarters, today house the armory where many pieces from the fort's world-renowned firearms collection are displayed.
After the American Revolutionary the fort lost its military value and was abandoned. The upper portions of the walls and much of the stone barracks were carried away to build foundations and stone houses for miles up and down Lake Champlain. In 1820, William Ferris Pell purchased the ruins of the fort and, in 1908, Stephen H.P. Pell, a great-grandson of William, together with his wife, Sarah Gibbs Thompson Pell, began the restoration of the fort. Alfred Blossom, an English architect and engineer, was hired to oversee the restoration. The reconstructed fort stands on the original foundations, which the French built more than 240 years ago. In some places on the outer walls, visitors can see where the old masonry stopped and the new work was added. In 1909, the Fort Ticonderoga Museum opened to the public.
Fort Ticonderoga's collection of some 5,700 artifacts and artworks is especially strong in documenting the common soldiers' experience with armament, accoutrements, uniforms and related materials. Archeological specimens ranging from cuff links to cannon balls add another 21,500 objects to the collection. Pre-contact archeological collections developed over the past 80 years document 10,000 years of Native American history on the Ticonderoga peninsula.
The collection of 18th century engraved pictorial and map powder horns, a unique regional form of American folk art, is one of the largest in the country. The collection of polearms (including halberds, spontoons, pikes and lances that served both as weapons and insignia of rank) is one of the few in North America that includes a significant number of American-made examples. The firearm collections rival those at the Tower of London and Colonial Williamsburg. The fort also preserves a number of major works of art, emphasizing documentary scenes (by Cole, Durand and Davies) and portraits of many of the key figures in its history (1750-1780).
Since 1992, the Thompson Pell Research Center has been home of Fort Ticonderoga's library, collections storage and conservation facility, and administrative offices. The library's 10,000 volumes hold definitive collections of 18th century French, English, German, Dutch and American military manuals; materials documenting the 19th century "Northern Tour" to historic and natural sites; as well as current scholarship on the Seven Years' War and the American Revolution. The manuscript collection includes more than 300 individual "collections" of diaries, letters, pay- and muster rolls, orderly books, etc. – all related to the 18th-century history of the fort. The fort also has the holdings of eight decades of museum archives and nearly two centuries of Pell family papers.
