The Fort William Henry is hosting a Veterans Day Field of Flags Ceremony. The observance commemorates our American military, past and present, for their service and sacrifice. More than 8,000 flags are proudly displayed on The Fort William Henry’s west lawn this year through Friday, November 12, 2021. The field offers time to reflect, a place for healing, and a moment of peace.
A formal acknowledgment and musket salute will occur on Thursday, November 11, 2021, at 11 am. Refreshments will follow in The Village Blacksmith Restaurant.» Continue Reading.
Lake George Arts Project’s annual winter fundraiser, “Bands ‘n Beans” has been set for March 29, from 2 to 7 pm.
More than twenty five area restaurants are set to present guests with their best chili in a friendly competition to win in a number of categories. Attendees will taste them all and vote on their favorite while ten local bands will play continuous music on two stages. » Continue Reading.
Lake George’s Fort William Henry is honoring all active and veteran military personnel as part of its Field of Flags. The annual event continues to commemorate our American military, past and present, for their service and sacrifice.
Located in the center of Lake George, the replica of Fort William Henry is on the footprint of the original 1755 fort. The original Fort William Henry provided a strategic staging ground to protect the inland waterway from attacks from the French. » Continue Reading.
Hot chili and hot music will be celebrated at the 28th Annual Bands ‘n Beans event to be held at Fort William Henry Conference Center in Lake George on Sunday, March 31, from 2 to 7 pm.
More than twenty area restaurants will participate in this hotly contested event, along with continuous music on two stages with The Radio Junkies, PJ Ferguson 2, Rich Ortiz, The Switch, Steve and Kenny, Stony Creek Band, Tim Wechgelaer & Chris Carey Band, and Ten Most Wanted. » Continue Reading.
The remains dislodged from an 18th century military cemetery at a Lake George construction site will, in all likelihood, be reinterred on the grounds of Fort George Park, say Village officials.
The Village’s Board of Trustees has adopted a resolution calling upon New York State to permit the remains to be buried at the state-owned park, said Mayor Bob Blais.
Blais said New York State officials support the proposal, although the remains will be in the possession of state archaeologists for at least a year, undergoing examination and analyses. » Continue Reading.
The Board of Directors of Fort William Henry Corporation has announced the election of Kathryn Flacke Muncil, Sebastian J. Luciano, and Nancy Flacke Reuss to a new executive leadership team.
The first Fort William Henry Hotel opened in 1855. The resort, one of the oldest and largest on Lake George, now includes the Fort William Henry Hotel and Conference Center, the Best Western Hotel at Exit 21 and the recreated Fort William Henry, site of a pivotal 1757 French and Indian War battle.
Fort Ticonderoga will hold a one-day living history event on Saturday, March 25th. Attendees will witness how French soldiers, Canadians, and Native warriors prepared for an attack on Fort William Henry on March 16, 1757.
Programs include tours, living history demonstrations, historic trades, weapons demonstrations, and fife and drum corps performances throughout the day. » Continue Reading.
What might Lake George have looked like 260 years ago, on the eve of the French attack on Fort William Henry?
That’s what Steve Collyer, an artist and Fort William Henry’s lead interpreter, has attempted to depict in a new display in the entryway to the museum and historical attraction.
The display, which includes three figures – an American colonial, a British regular and a ranger, all sculpted by the late Jack Binder decades ago – was unveiled in October. » Continue Reading.
Each year the Surrender of Fort William Henry is honored by a wreath laying ceremony, a reenactment and the reading of the official Articles of Surrender on the museum’s lawn overlooking Lake George. According to Fort William Henry Museum Director Melody Viele, this annual anniversary focuses on the importance of the French and Indian War.
“The Colonies learned to fight during the French and Indian War,” says Viele. “It was the first event to unite the colonists. They joined together to fight the French. Later the British tried to recoup their expenses through taxes, which inadvertently led to the Revolutionary War.” » Continue Reading.
“It was in this scene of strife and bloodshed that the incidents we shall attempt to relate occurred, during the third year of the war which England and France last waged for the possession of a country that neither was destined to retain.”
Thus begins James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans. Published in 1826, it was the first novel based on America’s own, relatively recent history.
In August, 1757, after enduring a siege that had lasted six days, outnumbered three to one and deprived of any hopes of re-enforcements, Lt. Commander Munro, the Scots veteran charged with the defense of Fort William Henry, surrendered to the Marquis de Montcalm on the condition that the garrison be allowed to march out with the honors of war – flags, arms, but no ammunition. Montcalm agreed to escort the garrison to Fort Edward. The wounded were to remain at Fort William Henry until they were able to travel. » Continue Reading.
There are some things that are out of my comfort zone and actively seeking all that is terrifying leads the list. Recently I attended Fright Night at Tucker’s Great Adirondack Corn Maze and did my best to look brave around a bunch of 12-year-olds. My daughter didn’t need my moral support and soon let me catch my breath at the bonfire and ponder my fears.
Though there are still haunted wagon rides and Fright Fests to be found around the Adirondacks this Halloween weekend, Fort William Henry’s Ghost Tours offer scary stories tied to paranormal experiences. It isn’t the shock treatment that some people crave, but a trip through history that is weaved with people’s real experiences with ghosts. Whether you believe in the hauntings is completely up to you! » Continue Reading.
Lake George has been lodging visitors at the site of the Fort William Henry Resort and Conference Center for more than 150 years. 156 years, to be precise.
Five years after the original hotel opened in 1855, the first Minnehaha was launched, and her captain entered into a relationship with the steward of the hotel’s dining room; as the boat came churning up the lake, the captain would blow the ship’s whistle once for every 10 passengers aboard, so that the steward would know how many would be in for dinner.
In 1868, the hotel was sold for $125,000 to T. Roessele & Sons of Albany and enlarged. A mansard roof was added and the hotel was now seven stories high. A 25 foot wide piazza extending the entire length of the north side of the building, supported by a row of 38 foot-high Corinthian columns, was also added. By then, steamboats were being met on the docks at the foot of the hotel’s lawns with 13 piece German bands. The hotel could accommodate 1000 guests; among them, former president U.S. Grant and Generals W.T. Sherman and Philip Sheridan, to name just a few of the celebrities who cooled themselves on the piazza. A twelve year-old Theodore Roosevelt accompanied his family to Lake George in 1871, and they, too, put up at the hotel. Roosevelt kept a diary of the visit, recounting each day’s activities. For instance, of August 2nd he writes:
”Early in the morning we went to the ruins of Fort George which we found after some difficulty. We brought home some specimens with us. There was an airgun before the hotel with which we had some shooting matches with variable success. There was an Indian encampment near which of course we visited. Then we hired some boats and rowed off to an island in the lake where we left the Ladies, went off some distance and had a swim. We then rowed back to the island (and then) home to dinner.”
A visitor during that same decade wrote:
”The coach is driven with a sweep and a swirl through the grounds of the hotel , and, suddenly turning a corner, dashes up before the wide and corridored piazza, crowded with groups of people – all superb life and animation on one side of him, and a marvelous stretch of lake and mountain and wooded shore on the other…”
The hotel opened for business in mid-June. Life there was pleasant and undemanding, if an 1893 account in the Lake George Mirror is any indication. “The hotel is supplied with every modern convenience, and there are billiard rooms, bowling alleys, swimming baths, lawn tennis courts, and music is provided throughout the season, there being also balls and parties at intervals.”
The Mirror continues: “The cuisine is always of the finest and cannot be improved upon, it being of a character to commend it to wealthy and fastidious people. The drives in the neighborhood, the fishing in the lake, and the boating and yachting, all contribute to make a stay at the Fort William Henry Hotel all that once could wish for… The outlook from the piazza is at all times little less than enchanting, commanding, as it does, the level reaches of the lake for miles, with a number of the most picturesque islands and promontories. In the evening, by full moonlight, or on a peaceful Sunday, while the orchestra discourses sacred music, and the only undertone is the flutter of cool dresses, dainty ribbons and fans, and the low voices of friendly promenaders, life here seems entirely worth living.”
The author of the Mirror’s account goes on to describe the interior of the hotel:
“Under the dome (from the upper part of which a grand view of the lake is obtained) is the general office, including also a ticket office, telegraph office, bazaar, news, book and cigar stand, etc. West of this is the drawing room, and on the east, suites of apartments, bijou parlors, and the large billiard hall, while at the back is the great dining hall. A cabinet of Indian and historical curiosities, gathered from the locality, attracts great interest.”
The hotel was owned by the Delaware & Hudson Railroad when it burned in June 1909, and two years later a new hotel was constructed on the site. In an article on the opening which appeared in the Lake George Mirror, the new structure was acclaimed “a masterpiece of architecture. With its companion hotel at Bluff Point on Lake Champlain, it shares the honor of being the only fireproof house in Northern New York devoted to the resort business.”
In another edition of the Mirror, an editorial described the lavish display of flowers and shrubs surrounding the new hotel and urged the natives to cooperate with the hotel in guarding the grounds against vandalism.
This hotel was demolished in the summer of 1969, the very same week that the Prospect Mountain Highway opened for the first time. In retrospect, the two events seem not co-incidental, since it was the automobile, more than any other single factor, which brought about the demise of the great resort hotels. The original dining room of the 1909 hotel, however, is still intact, as is the hotel’s stable.
In the two centuries that followed the French destruction of Fort William Henry in 1757, the only visible reminder of the fort was the old well on the grounds of the hotel.
“The French,” wrote Seneca Ray Stoddard in his 1873 guide to Lake George, “burned whatever they could not carry off. They could not steal or burn the ‘Old Fort Well’ however, and it still remains, partially filled with stones and rubbish.”
It was rumored that the British hid their gold and silver in the well during the seige of 1757. After the surrender of the fort to the Marquis de Montcalm, the officers’ wives who had been told that they would be granted safe passage to Fort Edward threw their jewelry into the well “having a premonition of disaster,” according to one account. According to Stoddard’s tale, “On the night of August 9, 1757, as the Indians went about the fort, killing and scalping the sick and wounded, two women were thrown headlong down the well after having been scalped.”
Despite that rich history, the well has been excavated only twice; in the 1950s and again in 1997, under the supervision of archeologist David Starbuck.
The well was dug in late 1755, after Sir William Johnson defeated the French at the Battle of Lake George and began building Fort William Henry. Rogers’ Rangers, it is believed, actually dug and built the 40 ft deep stone well.
At least one source has it that the completion of the well was commemorated with a dance and a ration of rum for all.
Approximately one hundred years after the destruction of the fort, the first hotel was built on the site.
“Honeymoon couples would walk by the well and throw silver coins into it, believing that this offering to the legends of the ghosts which have been said to inhabit the walls of the old report, would bring them good luck, and future happiness,” the Lake George Mirror reported in 1955.
When reconstruction of the current replica fort began in 1953, the bottom was only 19 and 1/2 feet from the curb, indicating that that in the intervening years about 20 feet of of dirt and debris had accumulated.
According to David Starbuck, archaeologists were unable to dig deeper than 23 feet before hitting water when excavating the well in 1960. In 1997, Starbuck began a new archaeological dig at the fort, part of which was an excavation of the well. With the aid of sections of steel culvert with which to line the well and prevent it from collapsing, Starbuck himself was able to reach a depth of 30 feet.
“Since 1960 the well had been the center of attention for every school child who visited the fort,” Starbuck wrote in his “Massacre at Fort William Henry.” “They left us with a forty year legacy of tourist memorabilia.”
Starbuck and his assistants found toys, sunglasses and a lot of bubblegum.
At 27 feet from the surface, Starbuck made a discovery that completes our knowledge of the well’s construction. “The well had been lined at its bottom with vertical wood planks, creating a water tight barrel that prevented silt from washing in,” Starbuck reported. “(Each of the planks) was three inches thick, and twelve inches wide. Massive and tightly joined, the boards were waterlogged and swollen, and groundwater could seep into the well only by running over the tops of the planks through knotholes.”
Fort William Henry’s Archaeology Hall includes a full scale recreation of the well, enabling viewers to experience for themselves Starbuck’s sensations as he stood at the bottom of the well, sending up buckets of earth, debris, and the thousands of coins visitors have tossed into the well over the years. (The treasure, we assume, went elsewhere.)
Gerry Bradfield, the fort’s curator at the time, installed a video camera within the well’s shaft and taped the entire process.
The Archaeology Hall and other rooms throughout the Fort contain thousands of artifacts discovered on the grounds of Fort William Henry since the 1950’s, when the reconstruction of the fort began. Recent discoveries, such as pre-historic pottery shards as well as buttons from the uniforms of American soldiers in the War of Independence, suggest that the site was used before and after the fort was burned in 1757.
The exhibits are part of a larger “Living History Program” designed to enable visitors to better understand the history of the colonial era. The program includes tours led by guides in authentic costumes, the firing of 18th century muskets and cannons, recreated scenes of life at the fort and scenes from the events that took place there, as well as visits to dungeons, a powder magazine and a crypt of the victims of Montcalm’s 1757 massacre. Visitors can also view the 1936 film version of Cooper’s “Last of the Mohicans,” believed by many to be the best and most graphic portrayal of Montcalm’s siege and the ensuing massacre.
The Fort William Henry Museum is open from May through October.
Photo of Old Fort Well, circa 1959, Lake George Mirror files
Warren County’s Supervisors may be wavering on whether to preserve or condemn the two buildings that remain standing at Gaslight Village, but the time for a decision is fast approaching.
A $200,000 grant has been awarded to the three environmental organizations that own an easement on all but 2.5 acres of the Lake George property to demolish Charleys Saloon and some smaller structures this summer, and the county must decide whether it wants that grant to also pay for the demolition of Gaslight Village. “I know there will be unhappy people whichever way we go,” said Supervisor Bill Kenny, who chairs a committee of Supervisors monitoring the project, which will include a park and water pollution controls.
Warren County, the Town and the Village of Lake George have until the end of May to reach a decision, said Warren County attorney Paul Dusek.
By then, Requests for Proposals will have been issued soliciting bids for the demolition of some or all buildings.
If the Calvacade of Cars building and the Opera House are omitted from the bids, they will remain standing.
Should the municipalities decide at a later date that the buildings are too costly to repair (the engineering firm of Clark Patterson told the Supervisors that it would cost at least $1.5 million to restore both buildings) the municipalities will have to pay for the demolition themselves
The Opera House, which Warren County Superintendent of Public Works Bill Lamy characterized as “not safe” and structurally unsound, was expected to be designated for destruction by the Warren County Board of Supervisors at its February meeting.
In fact, a resolution had been drafted for the Supervisors to approve agreeing to the demolition of the Opera House.
Instead, and despite Lamy’s analysis, the Supervisors voted to retain both buildings.
That decision pleased Lake George Supervisor Frank McCoy, the director of the Lake George Chamber of Commerce and local businessmen like John Carr, who told the Board, “these buildings are usable.”
The vote dismayed Lake George Village Mayor Bob Blais and several Lake George residents and business owners, including Lake George Steamboat Company president Bill Dow, who favor the demolition of the buildings. [Ed. – Read comments from two residents, Betty Spinelli and Joe Stanek, at the Lake George Mirror].
Dow, Fort William Henry Corporation president Bob Flacke and the Lake George Citizens group prefer a plan presented by Mayor Blais at another meeting of county supervisors, held a week later.
Blais argued that both buildings should be demolished.
“Four engineering studies have indicated that the costs to renovate the buildings into usable meeting space is extensive,” he said.
The open space should be used for parking, at least until a study has been undertaken that would identify the best use for the site. If the study recommended the construction of a new building or a pavilion, grants could be sought, said Blais.
Lake George Village has been awarded approximately $4.5 million in grants for similar projects in recent years, Blais said.
Regardless of the county’s decision about the Gaslight Village buildings, demolition of Charley’s Saloon on the parcel south of West Brook will start in mid-June, following the conclusion of Americade.
“New York State’s Department of Transportation will contribute the first $600,00 toward the construction of a storm water treatment complex on the historical wetlands, but the construction schedule has to coincide with work DOT is planning for Route Nine,” explained Peter Bauer, the executive director of The Fund for Lake George.
According to Bauer, the demolition will be completed by mid-summer; construction of the storm water management complex will begin after the Adirondack Nationals Car Show in early September.
Kenny’s committee held a public hearing on to solicit opinion about the future of the Opera House and the Calvacade of Cars buildings on March 22.
It will meet again on April 12 before making a recommendation to the Board of Supervisors.
A new guidebook to 19 French and Indian War historic sites invites travelers travel to destinations in New York and Pennsylvania. The Great Lakes Seaway Trail has published Waterways of War: The Struggle for Empire 1754-1763, A Traveler’s Guide to the French & Indian War Forts and Battlefields along America’s Byways in New York and Pennsylvania.ports. It’s one of the best general guides to the French and Indian War I’ve seen and covers the fortified houses, American and French forts, Lake George shipwrecks, and other battlefields and historic sites from the period. » Continue Reading.
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Lake George Arts Project’s annual winter fundraiser, “Bands ‘n Beans” has been set for March 29, from 2 to 7 pm.
Hot chili and hot music will be celebrated at the 28th Annual Bands ‘n Beans event to be held at Fort William Henry Conference Center in Lake George on Sunday, March 31, from 2 to 7 pm.
The remains dislodged from an 18th century military cemetery at a Lake George construction site will, in all likelihood, be reinterred on the grounds of Fort George Park, say Village officials.
The Board of Directors of Fort William Henry Corporation has announced the election of Kathryn Flacke Muncil, Sebastian J. Luciano, and Nancy Flacke Reuss to a new executive leadership team.
Fort Ticonderoga will hold a one-day living history event on Saturday, March 25th. Attendees will witness how French soldiers, Canadians, and Native warriors prepared for an attack on Fort William Henry on March 16, 1757.
What might Lake George have looked like 260 years ago, on the eve of the French attack on Fort William Henry?
“It was in this scene of strife and bloodshed that the incidents we shall attempt to relate occurred, during the third year of the war which England and France last waged for the possession of a country that neither was destined to retain.”
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