1,000+ boat flotilla lives on in Lake George exhibit
LAKE GEORGE, N.Y. (NEWS10) - One year ago, the Lake George Battlefield Park Alliance unveiled a new chapter by debuting a visitor center along Fort George Road. The center houses historical artifacts local to Lake George from the French & Indian War and the Revolutionary War.
On Tuesday, stakeholders in the house of Lake George's history celebrated a new addition to the basement floor of the center. Battlefield Park Alliance President John DiNuzzo pulled off the sheet on a new diorama - created with help from Adirondack Experience in Blue Mountain Lake - showing a flotilla of troops traveling towards a historic defeat. For the center, the new exhibit is the opposite - a complete and decisive victory.
"We got a call last September from the Adirondack Experience," DiNuzzo recounted. "They wanted to know if we would be interested in a diorama of 1758, that depicts (British General James Abercromby) embarking on the head of Lake George - right beyond our window here - to attack the French at Ticonderoga."
That's exactly what the visitor's center got. The diorama depicts a flotilla of 15,000 troops traveling by boat to the north end of Lake George, in a journey that would end in defeat at the hands of the roughly 4,000 French soldiers there. The flotilla consisted of over 1,000 boats, and is considered one of the largest of its kind in U.S. history. The diorama isn't new, originally built in the 1950s.
DiNuzzo invited several members of the Lake George Town Board up to be recognized for their own role in bringing the diorama to renewed life. The town funded the refurbishment of the nearly 70-year-old display through occupancy tax funds - and the members who agreed to do so know perfectly well the significance of the diorama to Lake George's legacy.
"I know this battle," said Lake George Deputy Town Supervisor Marisa Muratori. "This is a battle that's been spoken of for generations, and I've known of it since I was a kid. They say that there were so many bateaux on the lake going towards Ticonderoga that you couldn't see the water."
Adirondack Experience itself was unable to send Collections Manager Doreen Alessi-Holmes to speak, due to ongoing flooding issues in the Blue Mountain Lake area caused by heavy rainfall on Sunday and Monday. Alessi-Holmes sent in a statement by email, stating her pride to see the diorama refurbished and in public.
The Battlefield Park Alliance also thanked Parks & Trails New York for supplying a recent $50,000 grant, which has allowed the hiring of the center's first full-time employee. The center is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursdays-Mondays.