Champlain: The Border Town and Fort Blunder

The village of Champlain sits at the northern tip of New York, essentially on the Canadian border, in a corridor that was French territory until seventeen sixty-three and then American after the Revolution. Samuel de Champlain first explored Lake Champlain in sixteen oh nine, and both the lake and eventually the town carried his name forward.

The corner of New York around here became famous for one of the more embarrassing mistakes in American military history. After the War of eighteen twelve, Congress authorized a fort to be built directly on the border as a show of strength. Construction began in eighteen sixteen, but a surveying error placed the entire fortification three-quarters of a mile inside Canadian territory. Work stopped, the press dubbed it Fort Blunder, and the uncompleted walls sat awkwardly in Canada for years. After the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of eighteen forty-two finally settled the border, the United States built a proper replacement called Fort Montgomery, which took until eighteen seventy-one to complete. Ruins of that fort still stand nearby at Rouses Point.