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Fort Saint-Frédéric
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Foreground: Fort Saint-Frédéric
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| Location: | Crown Point, New York |
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| Built: | 1734 |
| Governing body: | State |
| NRHP Reference#: | 66000517 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP: | October 15, 1966[1] |
| Designated NHL: | October 9, 1960[2] |
Fort Saint-Frédéric was a French fort built on Lake Champlain (in modern New York State close to modern Vermont in the United States) at Crown Point to secure the region against British colonization and to allow the French to control the use of Lake Champlain.
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Construction started in 1734. When complete, the walls of the towering redoubt were twelve feet thick and four stories high, with cannons on each level. Fort Saint-Frédéric was manned by hundreds of officers and troops, principally from Les Compagnies Franches de la Marine.[3]
The fort gave the French control of the New France/Vermont border region in the Lake Champlain Valley. It was the only permanent fort in the area until the building of Fort Carillon at Ticonderoga starting in 1755. Many French raids originated from here and many British raids targeted this stronghold. It was constructed on the tip of a strategic peninsula, at a very narrow point. The cannons of Fort Saint-Frédéric and of the later British fort here, Fort Crown Point, were capable of halting all north-south travel on the lake.
In 1759 when the British forces moved against Fort Saint-Frédéric during the French and Indian War, the French destroyed Fort Saint-Frédéric immediately before retreating northward.[4] The British Army and Provincial troops from nearby British Colonies then built Fort Crown Point , a vast fortification just southwest of the ruins of the French fort, starting in the fall of 1759. At the same time they built a fleet to use to gain military control of Lake Champlain and they also built the 77-mile-long Crown Point Road across the Green Mountains to connect Crown Point to the Connecticut River. The remains of both forts on the Crown Point peninsula are, since 1910, a state historic site located in New York. Both are also U.S. National Historic Landmarks. Fort Saint-Frédéric was registered as a National Historic Landmark in 1962.[2][5][6]
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