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Lost fort appears found at Champlain bridge site

When engineers determined the old Lake Champlain Bridge was unsafe and needed to be replaced, it seemed like the regrettable end of a historic landmark. The project, though, has led to a major archaeological discovery.

Scientists have found what appears to be a nearly 300-year-old French fort. The fort's discovery would be significant in its own right, but it would also represent the first physical evidence of a substantial French settlement known to have existed on the Vermont shore of Lake Champlain starting in the 1730s.

"It's a hugely exciting find — one of the great and exciting finds of a lifetime really," said Elsa Gilbertson, administrator for the Chimney Point State Historic Site, where the apparent fort was discovered.

"You would be hard pressed to find a more significant archaeological site in Vermont," said John Crock, director of the University of Vermont's Consulting Archaeology Program, which conducted the dig in cooperating with the Vermont Agency of Transportation and Division for Historic Preservation.

The discovery would provide a valuable missing piece of Lake Champlain's story. Native American artifacts from the pre-contact era (before Europeans arrived) have been found along the lakeshore in abundance. Likewise, the presence of English and later American settlers has been well documented.

However, the brief French settlement in Vermont has been something of a black hole. It lasted only from the building of the fort in 1731 until 1759, when France lost much of its North American possessions after being defeated by the British in Quebec.

"The fort is a unique

survivor," said Giovanna Peebles, Vermont's state archaeologist and historic preservation officer. "It's like the last unicorn."



Reason to dig

This missing bit of history apparently was sitting almost in plain sight, on land beneath the bridge in Addison. Archaeologists knew the fort might be there. A 1730s map showed the fort in this approximate location, and in 1929, when workers were building the piers for the bridge, they reported seeing signs of an old foundation.

What archaeologists needed was a good reason to dig. By nature, they are a cautious lot. Given the choice, they prefer to keep sites undisturbed, leaving the digging to the future, when more thorough and less-invasive techniques might exist.

In the case of the bridge site, they had no choice but to dig. The demolition of the bridge in late December, the construction of a temporary ferry landing and the construction of a new bridge could all affect buried artifacts at the site. Besides, since the bridge project is largely federally funded, laws and regulations required that important cultural resources be identified and protected as part of the job.

Working to beat the winter snows, archaeologists dug test pits under the bridge earlier in December. These square pits, located at promising spots, were only 50 centimeters (about 20 inches) on a side. There wasn't time or money for a full-scale excavation.

But the pits revealed plenty. Archaeologists hit pay dirt about a foot and a half from one of the bridge piers on the Vermont shore, which still stand. There, little more than a foot beneath the surface, they discovered an old stone foundation.

Many of those involved in the project speak of the foundation as being definitely part of the old fort. Crock, however, is more cautious. He says that so far everything adds up — the foundation wall was found in the right location, is of the right construction and had artifacts of the right era buried beside it — but he is not ready to declare the fort found. That determination will have to wait until archaeologists can unearth more of the foundation this summer.



Point of control

If this is indeed the fort, much more foundation remains underground. According to drawings at the French National Archives, the fort measured about 125 feet on a side, with a bastion on each corner. Inside the walls were a kitchen, bakery and storehouse, as well as buildings for the troops, the commander and a chaplain. The fort was large enough to accommodate 30 soldiers, though documents show that only 20 were stationed there initially.

France built the Chimney Point fort, which never had a formal name, as a way of staking its claim to Lake Champlain. The French had been given most of the lake under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht, which they signed with the British in 1711. Under the treaty, the border between the empires ran between present-day Westport, N.Y., and Ferrisburgh.

But when rumors reached the Marquis de Beauharnois, the governor of New France, that the British had designs on Lake Champlain, he acted to cut off their advance. He ordered the construction of a "fort de pieux," a wooden stockade fort at Chimney Point. The peninsula is at a narrow point on the lake, across from Crown Point on the New York side. A fort on this spot would allow the French, with only a small garrison, to control who traveled this stretch of lake. They could also harass any British troops in the area.

The fort was vital. Without it, King Louis XV declared, the French "could never show ourselves on Lake Champlain except with open force, nor make war against (the British) except with a large army."

Gilbertson thrills at the thought: "It's amazing to think that this spot where I am sitting right now was on the mind of the king of France at Versailles."

From its inception, the fort was intended to be temporary. The French immediately began plans for a much larger stone fort across the lake at Crown Point. Work on Fort St. Frederic began in 1734 or 1735 and was essentially complete by 1737.

To secure France's grip on the east side of the lake, Louis called for French farm families to settle the area. The population of settlers living outside the fort peaked at 154 in 1755, according to documentary research by Joseph-Andre Senecal, professor of romance languages at the University of Vermont.



Layers of history

Until the fort apparently turned up last fall, that was the most tangible proof we had of the French settlements. Archaeologists have failed to discover traces of the settlers' homes. Peebles believes those buildings might have been built close to the lake and hypothesizes that erosion may have claimed them. The peninsula where the fort sits hasn't eroded, Peebles said, because it is mostly bedrock.

In addition to the French fort, archaeologists have turned up evidence of Native Americans and Europeans interacting at the site. Among the artifacts discovered was broken European bottle glass that had apparently been used by Native Americans as a scraping tool.

"This is a classic combination of European and Native American uses in the contact period," said Crock. "Right after the fort was created, it became a hub of activity."

Archaeologists also discovered what appears to be the pottery works of Moses Bradley, who operated a shop and kiln on the property during the 1790s. Because of the proximity to New York, Bradley often sold his redware milk pans and other vessels to settlers across the lake.

The oldest object unearthed during the dig was a 9,000-year-old Native American spear point, which shows how long this location has been a focal point of human activity. Throughout human history here, the narrowness of the lake has made this a vital spot for communication and transportation, Crock said.

It's no coincidence that the old Lake Champlain Bridge spanned the lake here, he said, or that the new bridge will follow the same path.



(Editor's note: For more information about the Chimney Point Historic Site, visit the Lake Champlain Voyages Web site at www.historicvermont.org/imls/lakechamplainvoyageshomepage.html. Free copies of a book about the site are available by e-mailing Giovanna Peebles at Giovanna.Peebles@state.vt.us with your mailing address.)



Mark Bushnell's column on Vermont history is a weekly feature in Vermont Sunday Magazine. A collection of his columns was recently published in the book "It Happened in Vermont." He can be reached at vermontpastlane@gmail.com.

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