Upstate NY Treasure's

A reconstruction of Fort William Henry on the location of the original, at the south end of Lake George is a good place to view artifacts from, and learn the history of the French and Indian War.

Lake George Battlefield Park is a small, hilly park located behind Fort William Henry, which includes mostly unexcavated ruins of the original fort. Plaques detailing the battle at Fort William Henry in 1757 are on display. Lake George Battlefield Park is open from May-Columbus Day.

Along the bottom of Lake George lie sunken bateaux (flat-bottomed boats). A fleet of approximately 260 ships was deliberately sunk by the British and the American Colonists in 1758, during the French and Indian War. When Lake George froze in the winter, the ships could no longer be used, and so they were sunk to prevent the French and Native Americans from destroying them. In 1759, the British returned to Lake George and pulled out close to 200 of them. In 1960, two teenage scuba divers discovered the remaining bateaux, which no one realized still existed. That year, three of the boats were raised, with one put on display at the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake. Seven sunken boats near the southern end of Lake George were surveyed by a team of divers in the 1980s and have subsequently been deemed a Shipwreck Preserve and listed on theNational Register of Historic Places. Another ship, the 52-foot “Land Tortoise,” was discovered in 1990 and was designated by the Smithsonian Institution as North America's oldest intact warship. The Land Tortoise” is off-limits to divers, but the Shipwreck Preserve is open to divers from Memorial Day-September.