From the bridge between Alburgh, Vermont, and Rouses Point, New York, you can see a hulking ruin of gray stone sitting at the edge of Lake Champlain. This is Fort Montgomery. It took decades to build, and it never fired a shot in anger. Its story begins with an earlier fort on the same spot, one so badly misplaced that it earned the nickname Fort Blunder.

A Fort for the Next War

The War of 1812 left American leaders nervous about Lake Champlain. In September 1814, the U.S. Navy and Army had turned back a British invasion at the Battle of Plattsburgh, but the victory was close, and the lake was the natural invasion route between Canada and the Hudson Valley. Planners wanted a permanent fortification at the northern end of the lake to block the next attempt.

They chose Island Point, a low spit of land near Rouses Point. In 1816 workers began building an octagonal stone fort there, with walls about 30 feet high. President James Monroe visited the unfinished fort in July 1817. Everyone involved believed it stood on American soil.

The Blunder

The trouble was the border. The line between New York and Quebec was supposed to follow the 45th parallel. It had been marked in the early 1770s, when surveyors lacked the instruments to fix a line of latitude precisely. When the line was checked again, the real 45th parallel turned out to lie roughly three quarters of a mile south of the old markers. That put Island Point, and the new fort, in Canada.

Construction stopped. By one account, about $275,000 had already been spent. The unfinished fort was never given an official name, and people began calling it Fort Blunder. For years the abandoned walls became a handy quarry for local builders, who carried off the cut stone for houses, shops and meetinghouses.

One note on names: the first fort is often mistaken for Fort Montgomery, and the two are frequently blurred together, including in some official records. The distinction matters. Fort Blunder was the 1816 fort that was abandoned. Fort Montgomery is the later fort that was actually completed.

Fixing the Line

The United States and Britain settled the question in the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, which resolved several border disputes in the same package. Among its terms, the treaty left Island Point on the American side. Instead of moving the fort, diplomats had in effect moved the border to suit it.

Building Fort Montgomery

In 1844 the Army began work on a new, much larger fort at the same site. It was named for Major General Richard Montgomery, the Revolutionary War officer killed in the 1775 attack on Quebec City. The Army’s chief engineer, Joseph G. Totten, was a leading figure in American coastal and frontier fortification, and he is credited as one of the fort’s architects along with Montgomery C. Meigs.

The new fort was massive. Its walls stood about 48 feet high, with emplacements for 125 cannon on three tiers, and it was designed to hold about 800 men. Work continued almost without pause until around 1870, and it peaked during the Civil War, when about 400 stonecutters and masons were on the job. Fears that Britain might intervene on the Confederate side, along with the St. Albans Raid of 1864, when a small band of Confederate soldiers operating from Canada struck a Vermont town, kept the pressure on.

Obsolete Before It Was Finished

Fort Montgomery belonged to the so-called Third System of American coastal defense, built of heavy masonry to withstand smoothbore cannon. Rifled artillery, which came into wide use during the Civil War, made that kind of fort obsolete almost as soon as it was done. The garrison never approached its planned strength. A detachment of the 14th U.S. Infantry was stationed there for about three months in 1862, and at its most heavily armed, in 1886, the fort mounted 74 guns. The Army gradually removed its guns, and it was no longer maintained as an active post after 1910.

Auction, Demolition and Ruin

In 1926 the federal government sold Fort Montgomery and its reservation at public auction. During the years of neglect, local people took lumber, bricks, windows and doors. In 1936 and 1937 most of the fort was torn down. The stone was crushed and used as fill for the new bridge connecting Rouses Point with Alburgh, which means a piece of the fort lies under the road that Vermonters still drive across the lake.

What remains is a gutted section of officers’ quarters, part of the south wall, and a few bastions. A large part of the northwest bastion fell into the moat in April 1980.

Private Ownership and the eBay Saga

The fort was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 22, 1977, but the listing did not protect it from decline. Victor Podd Sr. bought the site in 1983. In the mid-1980s, local historical groups tried to persuade New York State to take the fort and restore it, but the state declined. After Podd’s death, his heirs tried to sell the property. In 2006 they put it on eBay, and the auction ended on June 5, 2006, with a winning bid of $5,000,310, but the sale never closed. Later listings and sale attempts followed, and the fort has remained privately owned.

Visiting Fort Montgomery

Fort Montgomery is private property, and the walls are unstable, so visitors should not enter. The best public view is from the Korean War Veterans Memorial Bridge on U.S. Route 2 between Rouses Point and Alburgh. If you are looking for the other Fort Montgomery, the Revolutionary War fort on the Hudson River, that one is a different place entirely, and it is the site of the October 1777 battle in which British forces took Forts Clinton and Montgomery.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is it called Fort Blunder?

The nickname belongs to the first fort, begun in 1816. A border survey showed it had been built on the Canadian side of the 45th parallel, so work stopped. It is often confused with Fort Montgomery, the later fort built after the treaty of 1842.

Who designed Fort Montgomery?

Joseph G. Totten, the Army’s chief engineer, and Montgomery C. Meigs are both credited as architects.

How much did it cost?

The first fort reportedly cost about $275,000 before work stopped. No reliable total has been published for the second fort.

Did any battles take place at Fort Montgomery?

No. The fort never came under attack. The 1814 Battle of Plattsburgh took place before the fort existed, and the 1777 battle sometimes linked to the name happened at a different fort on the Hudson.

Are there artifacts or relics?

No published archaeological work on the site is known. The best-known piece of the fort’s legacy is the stone used as fill for the Rouses Point bridge.

Is anyone restoring it?

No restoration is under way. New York State declined to take the fort in the 1980s, and the site has remained in private hands since the 1926 auction.

Sources

• Wikipedia, Fort Montgomery (Lake Champlain).
• New England Historical Society, Fort Blunder, America’s Most Embarrassing Gun Battery.
• FortWiki, Fort Montgomery (2).
• New York History Blog, Civil War Fort Montgomery Needs Preservation.
• My Champlain Valley, This Place in History: Fort Montgomery.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia