Ticonderoga

Fort Ticonderoga changed hands three times during the Revolution, and each time the transfer reshaped the strategic balance of the northern war. The stone fortress on the promontory between Lake Champlain and Lake George controlled the traditional invasion route between Canada and the Hudson Valley — a corridor that had been contested since the French and Indian War.

The first seizure, on May 10, 1775, was one of the war's defining moments. Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold led a small force of Green Mountain Boys and Connecticut volunteers in a dawn raid that captured the fort's garrison without a shot. The cannon and military stores seized at Ticonderoga were hauled overland to Boston by Henry Knox in the winter of 1775-1776, providing the artillery that forced the British to evacuate the city. Without Ticonderoga's guns, the siege of Boston might have dragged on indefinitely.

The fort's loss in July 1777 was equally consequential. When Burgoyne's army advanced south from Canada, General Arthur St. Clair evacuated Ticonderoga rather than defend a position he judged untenable against superior numbers and the British placement of artillery on Mount Defiance. The evacuation shocked Congress and the public, who had considered the fort impregnable. But St. Clair's decision saved his army to fight again at Saratoga, where it helped defeat Burgoyne.

Ticonderoga today is a privately operated historic site that preserves both the French and Indian War fortress and the Revolutionary War earthworks. The landscape — the lake, the heights, the narrow passage between the waters — makes the strategic logic immediately visible. This was ground worth fighting over, and three wars proved it.