Date Published:
June 2005

L’Encyclopédie de l’histoire du Québec / The Quebec History Encyclopedia

Fort Niagara

Fort Niagara, a fort at the mouth of the Niagara river, situated on the right bank, in what is now New York state. The first fort at this place was a log-structure, surrounded with a palisade, built for La Salle in 1678 as a trading-post. This fort was rebuilt by Denonville in 1686, but was abandoned in 1688. It was again rebuilt by [orders of] Vaudreuil in 1726; and in 1755-6 this fort was replaced by a stone structure. It was captured by Sir William Johnson in 1759, and remained in British hands until it was handed over to the Americans in 1796. It played a not unimportant part in the operations on the Niagara frontier in the War of 1812, and it was captured temporarily by the British in 1813. The name of the fort appears in the Jesuit Relations in the original form of the site of a village of the Neutral Indians. See P. A. Porter, Odd Fort Niagara (Quarterly Journal of the New York State Historical Society, 1925).

Source  : W. Stewart WALLACE, ed., The Encyclopedia of Canada, Vol. II, Toronto, University Associates of Canada, 1948, 411p., p. 373.