11 Facts About Fort Ticonderoga

Fort Ticonderoga, formerly Fort Carillon, is a large 18th-century star fort built by the French at a narrows near the south end of Lake Champlain, in northern New York, in the United States.

Name "Fort Ticonderoga" comes from the Iroquois word tekontaro:ken, meaning "it is at the junction of two waterways".

One strategically important place on the route lies at a narrows near the southern end of Lake Champlain, where Fort Ticonderoga Creek, known in colonial times as La Chute River, because it was named by French colonists, enters the lake, carrying water from Lake George.

In 1642, French missionary Isaac Jogues was the first white man to traverse the portage at Fort Ticonderoga while escaping a battle between the Iroquois and members of the Huron tribe.

Fort Ticonderoga continued to serve as a staging base for the action in Quebec until the battle and siege at Quebec City that resulted in Montgomery's death.

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George Washington, who had never been to Fort Ticonderoga, believed that an overland attack from the north was unlikely, because of the alleged impregnability of Fort Ticonderoga.

Washington, on hearing of Burgoyne's advance and the retreat from Fort Ticonderoga, stated that the event was "not apprehended, nor within the compass of my reasoning".

Fort Ticonderoga's action resulted in the freeing of 118 Americans and the capture of 293 British troops, while suffering fewer than ten casualties.

Fort Ticonderoga has been on a watchlist of National Historic Landmarks since 1998, because of the poor condition of some of the walls and of the 19th-century pavilion constructed by William Ferris Pell.

Fort Ticonderoga's hired Marian Cruger Coffin, one of the most famous American landscape architects of the period.

The Ticonderoga pencil, manufactured by the Dixon Ticonderoga Corporation, is named for the fort.