Campsite on the south bank of the Saranac River and near Fredenburgh Falls, and came to be called Pike's Cantonment for its commander, the noted explorer Col. Zebulon Pike.   During this dreadful winter of 1813-1814, approximately 200 men, of the 2000 regulars, died from disease and exposure.  Many of the soldiers died defending Plattsburgh and lie buried not far from here.  Col. Pike, before the war, went to explore the west and Pike's Peak in Colorado is named after him.
                             'The Tragic First Winter'

     Colonel Zebulon Montgomery Pike was left in charge of the 2000-3000-, an army here at Plattsburgh, an army for which no winter preparations had been made by the Army's Northern Command.  The encampment here in the winter of 1812-1813 met a typical north country winter of old - their experience made Valley forge look like a "cake walk". 

     Until the completion of the huts at Christmas, the men slept on the frozen ground, exposed to snow and sleet and protected only by their tents, and a thin blanket (four feet by three feet) and the newly cut branches of pine trees.  During December, about one hundred men died in Pike's command alone.

     Plattsburgh's own Dr. William Beaumont, (site # 12) Surgeon of the U.S. 16th Regiment wrote in his journal that the men's ailments "made the very woods ring with coughing and groaning".

     On December the 8th 1812 he described 'men lying in their tents, with small fires in front."  More than two hundred men  died that winter.

     Pike's army left for Sackets Harbor in mid March of 1813 on snowshoes.  The snow was three feet deep; their supplies and field pieces had to be pulled on sleigh by horses.  Most of those who walked survived - of those who rode the sleighs - some froze to death.