Crown Point

Long before the first shots of the American Revolution echoed at Lexington and Concord, Crown Point occupied a place of outsized strategic importance in the geography of North American warfare. Perched on a narrow peninsula jutting into Lake Champlain, roughly ten miles north of Fort Ticonderoga, this windswept promontory controlled the great water highway connecting the St. Lawrence River valley to the Hudson. Whoever held Crown Point held the key to movement between Canada and the American colonies. During the French and Indian War, the British had recognized this fact by constructing one of the largest fortifications in North America there — His Majesty's Fort at Crown Point, a massive star-shaped work of limestone and earth that cost the Crown a fortune and garrisoned hundreds of troops. The main fort alone enclosed over seven acres and mounted 105 cannons, but the broader fortification complex — including three redoubts, a series of blockhouses and redans, all interconnected by military roads — covered more than three and a half square miles. A village had even grown up close to the fort walls, complete with a tavern, store, and apothecary shop. Israel Putnam, who would later become a Continental Army general, had supervised much of the fort's construction. Archaeologist David R. Starbuck would later call it "the greatest British military installation ever raised in North America." But on April 21, 1773, a catastrophic chimney fire broke out in the soldiers' barracks. According to testimony gathered at the subsequent court of inquiry, the blaze was traced to Jane Ross, wife of a soldier in the 26th Regiment of Foot, who had been boiling soap in the chimney where the fire started — a common practice not prohibited by any standing orders. The flames quickly spread to the fort's powder magazine, triggering an explosion that reduced the mighty stronghold to ruin. In May 1774, British military engineer John Montresor surveyed the devastation and described it as "an amazing useless mass of earth only," proposing that the British improve one of the outlying redoubts rather than attempt to repair the main fort. By the time revolution came, Crown Point was a shell of its former self — and yet it would prove indispensable to the American cause, serving alternately as a staging ground, a refuge, a shipyard, and a strategic pivot upon which the fate of the northern theater turned.

PEOPLE

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Ethan Allen

Green Mountain Boys Commander, Vermont Land Speculator, Patriot Leader

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Henry Knox

Continental Army General, Chief of Artillery, Bookseller

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C

Colonel Seth Warner

Green Mountain Boys Colonel, Continental Army Officer, Vermont Militia Leader

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Benedict Arnold

Continental Army General, Lake Champlain Fleet Commander, Traitor

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