Fort Stanwix National Monument

After leaving the Saratoga battlefields we drove across much of upstate New York until we reached Rome late in the afternoon.  I had been to this city many years ago as my brother-in-law used to be stationed at an Air Force base in the area and I'd visited with my mother when one of my nephews was born.  While were were traveling on further before stopping for the night I wanted to make sure that we saw Fort Stanwix National Monument before we drove on.

Known as "the fort that never surrendered," Fort Stanwix, under the command of Col. Peter Gansevoort, successfully repelled a prolonged siege, in August 1777, by British, German, Loyalist, Canadian, and American Indian troops and warriors commanded by British Gen. Barry St. Leger. The failed siege combined with the battles at Oriskany, Bennington, and Saratoga thwarted a coordinated effort by the British in 1777, under the leadership of Gen. John Burgoyne, to take the northern colonies, and led to American alliances with France and the Netherlands. Troops from Fort Stanwix also participated in the 1779 Clinton-Sullivan Campaign and protected America's northwest frontier from British campaigns until finally being abandoned in 1781.
--from Fort Stanwix NPS site

We found parking along the street and then headed towards the visitor center.

 This bateaux represents centuries of trade passing through this location.

Once inside I made sure to stamp my passport book and those of all three kids as well.  I bought each one their own book when we visit their first National Park site after they were born.

I really enjoyed the cartographic artwork above the welcome desk.

The reconstructed fort is a bit over forty years old, something I didn't realize until we visited.

The exhibits did a good job presenting multiple viewpoints including Colonial and Oneida women.

Also you saw the perspective of traders and American soldiers. I really appreciate exhibits that try to tell the stories of as many of the participants as possible and don't just present one perspective.

The area now occupied by the fort was known as the Oneida Carrying Place, as it was a portage spot between two different bodies of water and thus a vital link along the local trade routes.  Multiple forts were built in the area by the Americans and British over the years.

Fort Stanwix was also on the border of lands allocated to European settlement by the British Crown.  Colonists were prohibited from going further inland into lands reserved for Native Americans by the Proclamation of 1763.  Many settlers resented this limitation and wanted to extend speculation and settlement further west.

After we'd been through the exhibits we headed out the back of the visitor center towards the reconstructed fort.

The reconstruction is built on the foundations of the original 18th century fort.

As you approach you can definitely see signs of modernity outside, but if you're careful you can get a great view just of the fortifications and feel like you've gone back in time.

Inside are quite a number of different buildings.

How would you like to sleep in the beds in these barracks?  As many as forty men would have been housed in this room in the casemate.

These were the missionary's quarters.  During the Revolution "[b]oth the Americans and the British used their missionaries in attempts to sway the Indians to one side or another by mixing politics into their religious messages." (exhibit signage) I'm more than happy for religious people to be involved in politics, but religion and politics themselves do not mix very well, inevitably religion is corrupted.

The sutler was a trader who was kept connections alive between the fort and other locations.

Artillerymen were housed in these quarters.  This position "was a specialist discipline, requiring knowledge of math and the use of measuring tools to calculate trajectories of cannon and mortar.  Artillery soldiers therefore received better pay and living conditions than regular soldiers, although their job was also far more dangerous." (exhibit signage)

While this room appears to be nicer than the rooms in the casemates it would have been draftier and thus not quite as pleasant.

The junior officer's quarters were definitely nicer than those for the regular men and with many fewer people in the room of course.

A number of the rooms were closed for construction.

We also entered another exhibit area inside the fort.  It was interesting to see that the area now occupied by the fort had long ago been fully urbanized and the land had to be cleared before the structure could be reconstructed.  This view shows the site in 1969.

Not quite a decade later you can see the reconstructed fort as it appeared for the national bicentennial in 1976.

I'm a sucker for models of buildings.  I find that they really help me to visualize what the site would have looked like in its heyday.

I also enjoyed this model of the fort under construction

The area included several learning activities for children, but we were very close to closing time and didn't have an opportunity to fully explore everything.

You can see quite a few of the fort's buildings from this perspective up on the embankment.

I also ventured into the depths of the bombproof.

While intended for storage it functioned as a hospital during the siege of 1777.

This is another photo I took with the Google Cardboard app that when viewed directly in Google Photos (click here) is shown as a full 360º view.

We were one of the last (or maybe the last) visitors to leave the fort for the day.

It looks like quite an impressive structure.

I walked back to the car via another route so that I could capture several pictures of the fort's exterior.

You can view more pictures of the museum and fort in this album.  The next fort we stopped at would prove to be a very different experience.  Look for that post coming soon.

~Matt