Join Fort Ticonderoga for a weekend building project! Discover how soldiers of the Continental Army built huts at Ticonderoga in 1776 and even try your hand at colonial construction techniques. This living history weekend entitled “Lodging as the Nature of Campaign will Admit” takes place Saturday and Sunday, September 13-14, 9:30 am to 5 pm.
Admission to the event is included in the Fort Ticonderoga’s general admission ticket. The Fort Ticonderoga experience also includes museum exhibitions, tours, historic trades, gardens, hiking trails, the six-acre Heroic Corn Maze and more! To learn more about the event visit www.FortTiconderoga.org or call 518-585-2821.
“Watch American ingenuity in action as soldiers use boards, posts, and beams to build their new homes at Ticonderoga to prepare for the winter season,” said Stuart Lilie, Director of Interpretation. “Discover the history detective story undertaken by Fort Ticonderoga museum staff as they pieced together their research on this unique housing built at Fort Ticonderoga in 1776.”
The Ticonderoga peninsula was already an old battlefield and encampment site by the summer of 1776 when American soldiers began digging in to block a British invasion southward. For soldiers, such as the Fourth Pennsylvania Battalion, their first priority was to erect earthworks with which to hold this vital ground. As the works neared completion and autumn weather began early that September, these soldiers turned their attention to building more hospitable living quarters than their canvas tents.
While many Army encampments, such as that built across Lake Champlain on Mount Independence, were built in woods, the Ticonderoga peninsula had been laid bare during the French and Indian War. Without a ready supply of logs, soldiers used sawn lumber milled at the saw mill operated by the army on the La Chute River, now located in present day Ticonderoga.
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