Fort Montgomery (Lake Champlain)

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The two remaining bastions of Fort Montgomery

Fort Montgomery on Lake Champlain is the second of two US forts built on the northern tip of the lake. The first unnamed fort was built in 1816, and Fort Montgomery was built between 1844 and 1871. It is on the border between the United States and Canada at Island Point in Village Rouses Point .

background

"Fort Blunder"

The construction of the first fort on this site began in 1816. The octagonal structure with the around nine meter high walls was supposed to protect against an attack by the British, as had led to the Battle of Plattsburgh in 1814 . In July 1817, President James Monroe visited the still incomplete fortress with the encampment. A measurement error made earlier was discovered later. This had led to the fact that the building site was erroneously on the Canadian side of the border, which led to the name "Fort Blunder": "Blunder" is the English word for carver . A new survey showed that the construction site was about 1200 meters north of the 45th parallel, the actual border line. Construction work has stopped and the site has been abandoned. A large part of the building was demolished by locals who used the material for their own buildings. There is no evidence that this first structure ever received a name. Most contemporary documents mention it as a works or battery at Rouse's Point . It is often incorrectly referred to as Fort Montgomery. The site of this first construction site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977 under the name Fort Montgomery .

Fort Montgomery

Eventually it was decided that a second fort would be built on the site after Island Point, the northernmost and most strategically important point on Lake Champlain, was returned to the United States in the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842. It was named after Richard Montgomery . This American War of Independence general was killed in the Battle of Québec during the invasion of Canada in 1775. Construction of Fort Montgomery began in 1844. The fort was one of the few permanent fortresses on the northern border, with most of the stone fortresses built on the Atlantic coast. Work on the fortification lasted until 1870, with construction reaching a hectic climax during the Civil War , when rumors of a possible British intervention against the Union made the rounds from Canada. Those fears did not prove too far-fetched when the 1864 Confederate- led St. Albans Incident - the northernmost military action of the Civil War - was carried out from Canada to Vermont in 1864 .

Over the three decades or so that Fort Montgomery was built, neither expense nor effort was spared. The most advanced military technology at the time was used. At the height of construction, around 400 masons and masons were working on the fortress. When the fort was practically finished, the walls reached a height of 14.6 m and provided space for 125 guns. The fort was one of only nine forts in the United States to have a moat , such as Fort Jefferson on the Dry Tortugas . As a result, Fort Montgomery was surrounded by water on practically all sides and only accessible from land via a drawbridge . This made it impossible for attackers to penetrate the fort once the drawbridge was up, as the opening was about five meters above the moat. A similar approach on the lake side also used a drawbridge that connected a jetty extending into the lake to the fort. An artificial island was built directly behind the fort, higher than the fort itself, protecting it from heavy cannon fire from the land side. This island was connected to the land by a narrow stone path, and to the fort itself by a bridge. The chief engineer of the US Army, Joseph Totten , invented iron-reinforced protective shields on the cannon stands to better protect the gunners in the fort. This invention was applied to the unfinished upper row of cannons at Fort Montgomery, while the lower row of cannons still used the older brick guards.

The fortress was originally planned for a garrison of 800 men; however, it was never manned by military means, but played a role of military deterrence at the border, like many others of this third fort system, which were only to be manned if necessary. A shot was never fired from the fort in combat, but that does not mean that the fort was unarmed. According to War Department records , the fort was armed with 74 cannons in 1886, including eight-inch and ten-inch Rodman cannons . Most of them were mounted facing north towards Canada. Two fifteen-inch cannons were not installed, but stood ready for years on the parade ground of the fortress, in order to be placed on the fortress walls in an emergency. When Commanding General of the Army William Tecumseh Sherman visited the fort in 1880 , he was so impressed with the facility that he returned to Washington with the intention of moving the garrison from the Plattsburgh Barracks here. However, due to public resistance, this troop transfer was not implemented.

In the years following the Civil War , military technology gradually began to use more powerful weapons, such as mortars and rapid-fire cannons, so that the military importance of brick fortifications like Fort Montgomery was rapidly coming to an end. The technology now available allowed an enemy to quickly and easily blow the mighty casemates to rubble and ashes. In the last decade of the 19th century the cannons of the old fort began to be removed. In 1900 there were still 37 cannons, a year later the number had dropped to 20. Presumably the last cannons were taken away from Island Point by barges in 1909. Most were loaded onto the railroad in Plattsburgh and ended up being sold as scrap. The now empty fort was watched over by a caretaker, mostly a retired soldier who lived in a house nearby and patrolled the site.

Decay

The United States Federal Government sold Fort Montgomery and the surrounding property at a public auction in 1926. During the following period, in which the fort was not in use, the same thing happened to the structure as happened to the fort, which had already been abandoned in 1816: many locals visited the site and removed usable material, including lumber, bricks, windows and doors to use them in their own homes and other buildings. Finally, most of the fort, with the exception of the officers' quarters facing west, a small section of the south wall and three bastions, was demolished in 1936–1937. The mighty stones were smashed and poured into the lake as filler when a bridge was built between Rouses Point and Alburg, Vermont. After the property changed hands several times, it was sold to Victor Podd, Sr., who set up the headquarters of the Powertex Corporation, which he owned, west of the fort. Island Point left Podd untouched. In the mid-1980s, he worked with the local historical societies to get New York State to acquire and restore the site. Although the free transfer of the fort was offered, negotiations could not be successfully concluded and the state declined to take over. Podd's heirs even tried to sell the fort on eBay in May 2006 . Although it was accepted on June 5, 2006 at a price of 5,000,310 US dollars , the sale then failed. The fort and surrounding land is still for sale.

There are fears among local conservationists that the remains of the fort are in danger of collapsing. This is partly due to the removal of iron wall anchors and similar construction parts installed in 1886 , which were probably broken out as scrap due to their material value when raw metal was scarce in the Second World War . These components were added later in order to better distribute the enormous weight of the outer fortress wall. This defensive element proved to be the weak point of the fortress in the years after its construction. For these reasons, the third bastion of the fortress fell into the moat in 1980 and was completely destroyed.

literature

  • Millard, J. (2005). Fort Montgomery: Through the years ... A Pictorial History of the Great Stone Fort on Lake Champlain . America's Historic Lakes. ISBN 978-0-9749854-2-8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fort Montgomery, Through the Years . James Millard, 2005
  2. ^ Fort Montgomery Through the Years . James P. Millard, 2005

Coordinates: 45 ° 0 ′ 20.2 "  N , 73 ° 20 ′ 56.4"  W.