From Montreal to New York City, the rivers and lakes of the Hudson and Champlain Valleys carved a path through the primeval forests of the Northeast. The rival French and English colonies on either end built strategic strongholds there throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The establishment of Fort St. Frederic at Crown Point gave the French command over the vital Lake Champlain. The French and Indian War saw the construction of frontier forts such as the English Fort William Henry at the headwaters of Lake George. Fortifications sometimes changed hands and names, such as when French-built Fort Carillon became the famed Fort Ticonderoga after a successful English siege. Author Michael G. Laramie charts the attempts to secure the most important chain of waterways in early North America.
Michael G. Laramie is the author of The European Invasion of North America: Colonial Conflict Along the Hudson-Champlain Corridor, 1609-1760; By Wind and Iron: Naval Campaigns in the Champlain Valley, 1665-1815 (Westholme 2014); and King William's War: The First Contest for North America, 1689-1697 (Westholme 2017). He lives with his family in Arizona.