Fort Blunder
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Fort Montgomery
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| Location | Rouses Point, Champlain, Clinton County, New York, U.S.A. |
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| Built | 1844 |
| Architect | Montgomery C. Meigs; Joseph Totten |
| NRHP reference # | 77000937 |
| Added to NRHP | August 22, 1977 |
Fort Montgomery on Lake Champlain is the second of two American forts built at the northernmost point of the American part of the lake: a first, unnamed fort built on the same site in 1816 and Fort Montgomery built in 1844.
The current massive stone fortification, the second fort, was built between 1844 and 1871 at the Canada–US border of Lake Champlain at Island Point in the village of Rouses Point, New York.
Construction was begun on the first fort at this location, an octagonal structure with 30-foot-high (9.1 m) walls, in 1816 to protect against an attack from British Canada such as that which led to the Battle of Plattsburgh in 1814. In July 1817, President James Monroe visited the incomplete fortification and the adjacent military reservation known locally as "the commons". However, due to an earlier surveying error it was later found that this first fort was inadvertently built on the Canadian side of the border, resulting in its sometimes being better known as "Fort Blunder". When a new survey discovered that the 45th parallel was actually located some 3⁄4 mile (1.2 km) south, effectively placing the fort in Canada, all construction on this first fort stopped and the site was abandoned. Much of its material was scavenged by the locals for use in their own homes and public buildings. No evidence has come to light that this first fort was ever named, with most contemporary documents simply referring to it as the "works", "fortification", or "battery" at Rouse's Point. It is often mistakenly referred to as Fort Montgomery. The site of the first fort was listed on the National Register of Historic Places under the name "Fort Montgomery" in 1977.
It was ultimately decided that a second fort would be constructed on the site after the Webster–Ashburton Treaty of 1842 ceded strategically important Island Point, the site of the 1816 fort and the northernmost point on Lake Champlain, to the United States. Construction began on the new fortification two years later in 1844, dubbed Fort Montgomery, in honor of the Revolutionary War hero General Richard Montgomery who was killed at Quebec City during the 1775 invasion of Canada. Fort Montgomery was one of a very few "Permanent" or "Third System" forts built along the Northern Frontier, most being constructed along the Atlantic Coast. Work on the fort remained almost continuous through 1870, with the peak of construction taking a frenzied pace during the American Civil War, amidst rumors of possible British intervention against the Union from Canada. Possibly to assuage those concerns, a detachment of the 14th U.S. Infantry was actually garrisoned at the fort for three months in 1862. These fears were eventually proven to be not that far-fetched when the St. Albans Raid, the northernmost action of the Civil War, took place in nearby Vermont in 1864 involving an incursion by Confederate forces from Canada.
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