Old Fort Niagara anniversary to be marked with re-enactment

Fort Niagara still looks like a tough nut to crack.

The outer walls trace the same outline of the high earthworks that greeted a British-led army sent to conquer the fort 250 years ago this summer. The three-storey “French Castle” looming over the western Lake Ontario shoreline is as imposing as when 3,500 redcoats, American colonials and Native American warriors laid siege to the fort in July 1759.

A significant part of the Old Fort Niagara State Historic site 42 kilometres north of Buffalo remains much the same as it was in 1759, at the end of the French and Indian War, when the English finally captured the wilderness outpost after decades under French control.

“Niagara probably gives us the best sense of an 18th-century fortification,” said Brian Leigh Dunnigan, executive director of the fort from 1979-1996.

This summer, the fort is commemorating the 250th anniversary of the siege. During the July 4 weekend, more than 2,000 French and Indian War buffs from across the U.S. and Canada are expected to participate in the re-enactment of the 1759 siege of Fort Niagara, which lasted three weeks.

Built to guard the portage between lakes Erie and Ontario, Fort Niagara was situated where the Niagara River empties into Lake Ontario. Seizing it would sever French Canada’s communication and supply lines linking the colony with its outposts in the Ohio Valley, around the western Great Lakes and on the Mississippi River.

The British force headed westward from Albany in May, crossed the lake’s southern shore and landed a few kilometres east of the fort on July 6. Five days later, British mortars, and later, cannon fire, began pounding the fort.

The survivors among the garrison’s 600 defenders surrendered on July 25, 1759. The British capture of Fort Niagara was one of the key events leading up to the French defeat outside Quebec City later that year in one of history’s most important battles. In 1763, France signed the treaty that surrendered Canada to the English.

Some 2,300 re-enactors are expected to recreate events from the siege. Visitors can view artillery barrages, musket volleys and skirmishes from the fort’s grass-covered walls, then stroll through the “living history camps” set up inside the fort. French and Indian War buffs will demonstrate how people lived, dressed and fought on the American frontier, said Tom Faith, a re-enactor from Elma, N.Y.

“We try to do things as accurately as possible, to do it as they did it,” he said.

Such public displays of history in action often engage people who are easily turned off by museum exhibits, said Dunnigan. “There was hardship and suffering, and people today will identify with people of an earlier time when it’s put in those terms.”

If you go
• Old Fort Niagara in Youngstown, N.Y., www.oldfortniagara.org or 716-745-7611.

• Admission $10 US; re-enactment $13 daily; three-day pass $25; family pass $45.