This past Sunday morning I decided to paddle to the fort below Wantastiquet Mountain known as Fort Dummer. Unlike Fort Ticonderoga and Fort St. Frederic, both on Lake Champlain and visited earlier this summer, there isn't much to see in the way of ruins for Fort Dummer as the site has been submerged below the waters of the Connecticut River since 1909. The fort was built in 1724 per the order of Lt. Governor William Dummer on lands believed at the time to be within the Province of Massachusetts Bay. They were called the Equivalent Lands and there's a convoluted story on how they came into William Dummer's possession. The story involves a 1687 purchase of a 12-mile long parcel of land above Northfield, Massachusetts. The parcel extended 6 miles from each side of the Connecticut River. Subsequently this land was set aside by Massachusetts for Connecticut as the Equivalent Lands. Connecticut later sold the land to help fund Yale University, and the final divvying-up of the Equivalent Lands occurred in 1718 at the Green Dragon Tavern in Boston. However, all of that was nullified in 1741 when a new border survey commissioned by King Charles 1 placed the fort's location within New Hampshire. Even later in 1777 it became part of Vermont and is believed to be the first European settlement in the Green Mountain state. At the time the fort was built Europeans were encroaching into the Abenaki people's world and the Abenaki were resisting this encroachment. In this struggle the western Abenakis were led by Greylock who is said to have conducted many successful raids while also successful in evading capture. Legend has Greylock earning the name Wawanolet meaning "he who fools the others, or puts someone off the track".
To reach the fort I launched from Hinsdale, NH a bit upriver from the Vernon Dam Hydro-electric station...
Heading upriver I next passed the shuttered Vermont Yankee nuclear facility...
...and continued upriver to the mouth of Broad Brook...
Here I knew I was getting near the submerged location of the fort and the historical marker that was relocated in 1908 just before the valley was flooded. To reach the marker I needed to pass through a low-headroom culvert where Venter Brook enters the river...
This brought me into a pond of sorts where Cerosimo Lumber sits at the pond's SW corner...
Etched into the concrete above the plaque is "This marker moved 2200 feet northwest from the original site Nov. 7, 1908".
Then it was back through the culvert and upriver just a bit to the now submerged spot where Fort Drummer is said to have stood between 1724 and 1771. Looking westward from the guesstimated location of the fort I tried to imagine how isolated the men who manned this fort found themselves. They were expected to go out on patrols to the surrounding country looking for signs of the Abenaki or the French. The fort was equipped with a "Great Gun" the sound of which could be heard for many miles. There are numerous stories of the patrols having to fight their way back to the safety of the fort.
This may have been the view downriver from the fort's elevated watchtower...
While searching for more info on the web I came across an 1891 tracing of a 1749 drawing of the fort...
Another map I came across was this one...
According to Mary R. Cabot's Annals of Brattleboro 1681 - 1895, Fort Dummer was initially staffed by 43 men and was only attacked once in October of 1724 by a force of about 70 of the enemy who killed or wounded 4 or 5 of the fort's occupants before being repulsed. Later the fort also served as a trading post and was finally closed around 1760. Fort Dummer was dismantled sometime in the 1760s or 1770s.
Additional info on the fort and its location were found at the blog Sokoki Sojourn, and the Harrington Collection of Fort Dummer artifacts. Most of the artifacts were collected by Walt Harrington during the 1970s when the river was temporarily lowered during repairs to the Vernon Dam.
Before leaving the area I paddled a little further upriver past the abandoned Fort Hill Branch RR bridge...
...where I got a look at the Route 119 bridge connecting Brattleboro, VT to Hinsdale, NH...
On my way back downriver the valley came alive with the sounds of Amtrak's Vermonter as it made its southward passage along the river.
Spotted this immature eagle not far from the takeout on the river's east side...
Approaching the takeout and seeing water being sprayed high through the trees I first feared that my car had caught fire...then thought it might be a salute of some sort...but ultimately believe it was a training session for Hinsdale firefighters...
Earlier in the week, on Wednesday, I visited the Assabet River in Stow and Maynard, MA. It was good to see some water actually flowing over the dam as the result of recent thunderstorms...
Paddled upriver...
...eventually reaching the site of the eagles nest that is no longer in existence. One of the two eagles that entered this world high in a pine above the river was still hanging around the exact spot where the nest used to be...
Not much in the way of trash on either river.
The Assabet had this...
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