Pittsburg-Chartierville Border Crossing

Pittsburg-Chartierville Border Crossing
Pittsburg, NH border station, as seen in October, 1997
Location
Country	United States; Canada
Location	US Port: US Route 3, Pittsburg, New Hampshire 03592 Canadian Port: Highway 257, Chartierville, Quebec J0B 1K0
Coordinates	45°15′10″N 71°12′18″W / 45.252715°N 71.204957°W / 45.252715; -71.204957
Details
Opened	1949
US Phone	(819) 656-2261
Canadian Phone	(819) 844-2262
Hours	US side: Open 24 Hours Canadian Side: Open 8:00am - midnight
Website http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/toolbox/contacts/ports/vt/0206.xml

US Port: US Route 3, Pittsburg, New Hampshire 03592

US side: Open 24 Hours

The Pittsburg-Chartierville Border Crossing connects the towns of Chartierville, Quebec and Pittsburg, New Hampshire. The crossing can be reached by U.S. Route 3 on the American side and by Quebec Route 257 on the Canadian side. It is the only international land border crossing in the state of New Hampshire. Pittsburg is notable for being the largest township (in terms of land area) in the continental United States. Although the US operated a border station at Connecticut Lakes as far back as the 1930s, the facility consisted of a small one-room structure, and later a mobile home. The US did not have a permanent inspection facility at the border until 1960, and the northernmost stretch of U.S. Route 3 remained unpaved until about 1970. In 2012, the United States built a new border inspection facility.

In 1997, the Pittsburg border station was equipped with a Remote Video Inspection System (RVIS), which enabled people to enter the US at this crossing 24 hours per day, even though at that time the station closed at 5:00PM. On the evening of December 15, 1999, a Canadian woman named Lucia Garofalo tried to use the RVIS to smuggle an Algerian man and a trunk full of what was later suspected to be explosives into the US. The remote inspector refused to allow her to enter, and she was then put onto a watchlist. On December 19, she was apprehended when she tried to enter the US at the Beecher Falls-East Hereford Border Crossing with another Algerian man. Garofalo was found to have ties to Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian member of al-Qaeda who was arrested by US Customs Service officials in Washington state on December 14, 1999, when he tried to enter the US with a car full of explosives, with the intent to detonate them at the Los Angeles International Airport. At Beecher Falls, the vehicle had no explosives, but trace elements were detected, indicating it had previously contained explosive material. It was never revealed what was exactly being plotted, but the arrest of these individuals apparently made it impossible for al-Qaeda to carry out its planned attack.