TICONDEROGA, a village in the township of Ticonderoga, Essex county, New York, U.S.A., on the outlet of Lake George, oo m. by rail N. by E. of Albany. Pop. (193o), 3,680. Ticon deroga is served by the Delaware and Hudson and the Rutland railways. The water from Lake George falls here about 3o ft., providing water-power, and among the manufactures are paper pulp, paper-making machinery and lumber. Commanding a por tage on the line of water communication between Canada and the English colonies, Ticonderoga was a place of considerable strategic importance during the Seven Years' War. On an eminence over looking the present village and Lake Champlain the French began building a fort of earth and timber in 1755 and called it Fort Carillon ; later it was named Fort Ticonderoga. Sir William Johnson led an expedition in the same year against this fort and Crown Point; though he failed to capture the forts he defeated Baron Ludwig August Diesku in the battle of Lake George and erected at the head of the lake Fort William Henry, which was captured by the marquis de Montcalm in 1757. On July 8, 1758, less than 4,000 Frenchmen were confronted at Fort Carillon by about 6,000 British regulars and 1o,000 provincials under Lieut. General James Abercrombie and Brigadier-General George A. Howe, but Howe, the controlling spirit of the British force, had been killed on July 6, and Abercrombie retreated, after an in effective attack which cost him nearly 2,000 men killed or wounded. In 1758, however, when Montcalm had gone to Quebec to oppose Wolfe and a force of only 400 men was left at Ticon deroga, Lord Amherst with 1 i,000 men invested it, and on July 26 the garrison blew up and abandoned the fortifications. At the
beginning of the Revolutionary War, on May io, 1775, a small expedition under Ethan Allen, a backwoods strategist untram melled by military pedantry, captured the fort by ruse instead of costly assault. When the American expedition against Canada was driven back from Quebec they garrisoned Ticonderoga so strongly that the British commander, Carleton, shrank from at tacking it. In 1777, however, Burgoyne's counter invasion from Canada arrived before the fort and occupied the precipitous Sugar Loaf Hill which commanded the fort. The garrison, al ready reduced in numbers and supplies, felt compelled to evacuate it and on July 6 the British cccupied it. Burgoyne, pressing on wards to the Hudson, was driven to surrender at Saratoga in October; Ticonderoga was abandoned by the British immediately after this disaster, but was reoccupied by them in 1780. After the close of the war it was allowed to fall into ruins. In 1909, on the occasion of the tercentenary celebration of the discovery of Lake Champlain, the restoration of the fort was begun under the direction of the owner of the site. The settlement of this region was begun soon after the close of the Seven Years' War, and the township of Ticonderoga was set apart from the township of Crown Point in 1804. The village of Ticonderoga was incorporated in 1889. The name "Ticonderoga" is a corruption of an Indian word said to mean "sounding waters."