The Niagara Portage

For thousands of years, the seven-mile-long Niagara Portage linked Lake Ontario to Lake Erie by giving travelers a land route around Niagara Falls. The trail ran from the Upper Landing, 1.5 miles above the falls, to the Lower Landing below the Escarpment at Lewiston. In the 18th century, Europeans turned the trail into a road capable of supporting oxcarts. Several forts protected the southern end of this strategically important portage road during the 18th century. The French erected Fort du Portage, also called Fort Little Niagara, in 1751 to protect fur trading interests at a site 1.5 miles above the falls. In 1759, during the final years of the French and Indian War, its garrison evacuated and destroyed the fort when British forces besieged Fort Niagara 1.5 miles to the north. After the British conquest of the Niagara Region, they built a new post in 1760 a little farther upriver, near the present Power Project intakes. Rebuilt in 1763 and named Fort Schlosser for the officer who directed the work, it was garrisoned intermittently until the 1790s, and its last few buildings were destroyed during the War of 1812.

Niagara Falls, New York · United States