Review first for America's Fort Café, the restaurant inside (four stars) and then for the Fort overall experience (five stars, with caveats).
You *can* just go to the museum shop/cafe without paying entrance - when you come to the gate, tell them you're not going into the fort and they won't charge you the gate fee. (You need a sticker to get into the fort.) You can also access the little-used but excellent hiking trails and history walk without paying admission.
We were pleasantly surprised by the cafe. The seating is a little crowded, with some community-table-style sharing for longer tables, but it's more than made up for by the fact you have a stunning lake view, and on our visit, very pleasant breezes. Service was very fast, both from the server and the kitchen.
The fare is basically diner food, but with very cute names. (The Montcalm Cristo sandwich, etc.) It's overpriced, as you would expect, but was definitely very well done relative to the usual diner fare. Plus, you can get local beers, and they have a little of the old colonial tavern flare. So if you're going to plan your visit around lunch, you could do a lot worse. (We didn't spot any picnic tables, fwiw, not sure about their picnic policy.)
The Fort: this is a recreation, not the authentic fort, and it's doubtful any of the succession of French, British, or American forts that occupied this space was quite like what's here today. The other caveat I provide is that this is a private historical site, not a national or state park, and as such there's a bit of a skew on the history to make the narrative fit into a sort of broader patriotic theme that is, if I can put this delicately, more political than historical. (This is common to most private historical society sites, from Mount Vernon on down, where the impetus to stay in business even for non-profits suggests overemphasizing the importance of a place and neglecting some unpleasant truths).
All that said, there's a ton to recommend this for both history buffs and those taking their kids on the history tour. The Fort itself is pretty impressive, nearing the end of a 100+ year effort to create a master plan for the site. The exhibits are a little random, but the artifacts they have -- both originals and some recreations or copies -- are quite interesting (including a display on ships of the US Navy that have borne the name of Ticonderoga). We particularly liked the series of historical maps, posted near windows where you could see many of the features described. Somewhat surprising, the history of Fort Carillon, the earlier French fort on the site, was well represented and the French are not just seen as a bump on the road to get to the Americans and British.
Also a bit of a surprise: there wasn't a long narrative about the Allan/Arnold/Knox trek to take the cannons from Ticonderoga to Washington's army in Massachusetts in '76, even though that's what the fort is best known for in popular (American) history; while it's not ignored I expected there would be more on this topic.
The re-enactors scattered around are great - friendly, knowledgeable (we had a really nice conversation with the cobblers about their craft), showing a bit of camp life, and performed some excellent demonstrations (the small musket demonstration was particularly well-done and detailed, and we enjoyed the Fife and Drum music).
One other lacuna: lack of an exhibit on the archaeology and restoration (or recreation) of the fort over the last 100 years. Maybe they don't want to pull the curtain so you can see Oz, but I'd be interested in that, which has both interest for preservationists and has its own interesting, odd history from what I know of it.
There's a lack of a guided tour, and visitors are left a bit to themselves to wander the parts of the Fort that are open. They do have a schedule of special events, all of which we missed.
If you come in August to October, leave time for the corn maze (down by the gardens) - you can walk down with the Fife and Drum corps at two points during the day, which is sort of fun, or drive down to save your energy for the maze. It's just a regular corn maze, albeit with some topical things cut into the corn, but it's a well done maze.
The gift store is dialed up with some of the usual colonial chaff (tricorn hats, play guns, fake aged copies of the founding documents, keychains, etc.), but they do have some nice things you don't see everywhere - a set of reproduction maps and illustrations, and a pretty nice selection of historical books. But again, they're missing a basic single-volume guidebook to the history at the Fort, tied in to the exhibits. They really need to hire a historian to write such a thing.
Fort and exhibits are 0% ADA compliant, btw. Stairs and bad transitions everywhere.
Recommended, with the asterisks above. read more