For ten thousand years, Native Americans crossed the river, settled on both sides, and fished here, and the site of the Indian village Techiroguen and the fort site were occupied for many centuries. Samuel de Champlain visited in 1615, Le Moyne passed through in 1654 on his way to Onondaga Lake and visited Techiroguen, and La Salle visited in 1673 while searching for a water route across the continent and also visited Techiroguen. Fort Brewerton was built by British soldiers in 1759 as a strategic outpost on a military route linking the Mohawk River with Lake Ontario, at a place long used on overland travel routes to cross the shallows at the outlet of Oneida Lake and connect north-south overland routes with east-west water routes, and in 1783 British Colonel Willet rallied here after a failed attack on Fort Ontario. Oliver Stevens settled at the fort site in 1789 as the first non-native settler in Oswego County, and the original blockhouse was built by Stevens in 1790. Jonathan Emmons operated a ferry across the river by 1813, the first bridge across the river was built in 1824, the channel was deepened for navigation in 1845, and in 1846 a plank road was built from Salina to Central Square. Four steamboats, Oneida, Oswego, Madison, and Onondaga, were built here, the Syracuse Northern Railroad reached Brewerton in 1871, Fort Brewerton was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1927, and the Blockhouse Museum opened in 1976. The reconstructed blockhouse represents a trading post and residence of the Oliver Stevens family, with a lower level that served as a trading post and military surveillance point and an upper floor that housed Stevens, his wife Nancy, and their six children, and the museum houses artifacts spanning centuries of Native American activities.