Old Arsenal Road (69 Arsenal Road)

A scenic horseshoe loop off Main St., Old Arsenal Road takes its name from the War of 1812, when an arsenal was built here to supply weapons and munitions for coastal and northern defense, as a strategically important location along the Lake Champlain corridor.

In 1812, the United States declared war on Great Britain. Although the official grievances focused on Britain’s impressment of American sailors during the Napoleonic Wars and its encouragement of resistance among Indigenous peoples in the trans-Appalachian West, the war also brought Canada into play for both sides. While the United States had designs on invading and annexing the lands to its north, the British simultaneously used it to mount a move southward into the United States.

In that conflict, Lake Champlain became a key passageway for invasion and defense. Whichever side controlled the lake could either drive north toward Montreal or south toward Albany and New York City. To defend the lake against a British expedition southward, the Americans established a series of batteries along its coast, including one in this vicinity. This fortification allowed U.S. troops to harass British ships and served as an advanced scouting location to warn Ticonderoga of any impending attack.

That planning proved prescient. In September 1814, the British sent a major expedition of 14,000 men south from Canada in a joint land/sea operation. They never made it this far south; a combination of 4,000 United States soldiers, sailors, and militia met them near Plattsburgh and fought a fierce resistance that killed the enemy naval commander and convinced the rest to turn back. But one can still imagine Americans standing sentry on this spot more than 200 years ago, looking out over the waters, ready to defend the nation by fortifying this frontier.

Ballard Park: Westport Inn Footprint & Adirondack Chairs (6466 Main Street)

Ballard Park’s lawn and shoreline once hosted the grand Westport Inn (late 1800s to 1967)—a focal point of Adirondack and Lake Champlain resort life. This once vibrant resort hotel provided music, boating, gardens, and community gatherings to its guests.

Resort hotels like the Westport Inn transformed Americans’ relationship to nature. During the early years of the nation’s history, the woods were seen as a dangerous place, where the headless horseman attacked Ichabod Crane near Sleepy Hollow and the ghostly Dutchmen tricked Rip Van Winkle into falling asleep for 20 years.

Starting in the 1850s, however, vacations in destinations like the Adirondacks became increasingly common, as middle and upper-class Americans from urban areas could increasingly reach the wilderness by train, steamboat, and other mechanized means. With plentiful lumber at their disposal, large resort hotels sprang up in New York State’s backcountry and on the shores of the region’s lakes, including the Westport Inn, which was the largest and most architecturally significant of the hotels in the region, peaking at a capacity of 175 guests.

Today, Ballard Park is host to summer concerts and game nights, and skating and sledding in the winter. Here, you’ll also notice several Westport Chairs planted amid the trees and gardens during the summer season. Did you know the iconic Adirondack chair has its origins in Westport? Indeed, Thomas Lee’s 1903 Westport Chair design and patent created a timeless innovation in outdoor furniture. You can see them throughout town, including a dozen oversized Westport Chairs custom-painted by local artists along the Westport Chair Trail!

Main Street Historic Downtown (6472 Main Street)

Rebuilt after an 1876 fire destroyed much of the original downtown, this bustling business Main St. hub showcases late‑19th‑century commercial facades flanked by churches and homes in Federal, Greek Revival, Gothic, and Victorian styles.

At the base of the hill below you, the Westport Marina brings to life Westport’s transformation—from early dockside farming and transport hub to bustling industrial port from the 1840s to the 1890s, and later evolving into a leisure marina from 1940 to today.

As you look across the lake at the iconic views of Camel’s Hump along the spine of Vermont’s Green Mountains, you join a collection of onlookers that goes back not centuries, but millennia. Long before Westport became a town in 1815 or new settlers arrived in the region during the 1760s, Abenaki and other Native American families lived, fished, and hunted along this shore. For generations, Lake Champlain was their highway, with canoes carrying people, stories, and trade up and down the valley. Stone tools and pottery remnants remind us that everyday life unfolded here centuries before European settlement.

 Across from the downtown block lies the historic Westport library, completed in 1888 and graced by its sloping lawn, forming a green oasis in the heart of the village. Known for its distinctive architecture by Andrews and Jacques, the library still features its original mechanical hand-wound clock tower, which rings out every hour throughout the Westport community.

Alice Lee’s Local Legacy (6519 Main Street, Lee Park Stone Marker, just northwest of the bridge)

Alice Lee (1853–1943), born in Westport, became a nationally recognized civic leader whose career bridged her hometown and the growing city of San Diego. Inspired by Andrew Carnegie’s “Gospel of Wealth” ethos, she championed public libraries, urban parks, and civic reform, believing that communities thrived when citizens invested in shared spaces and opportunities. Her legacy endures here through the Westport Library and Lee Park, reminders that local roots can grow into contributions of national significance.

Northwest Bay, Champlain Shoreline (6519 Main Street, Lee Park Overlook)

Along Northwest Bay’s shoreline to your north was once the site of the Sisco Furnace, built around 1846 by Francis Jackson for Adirondack iron works. This dockside furnace helped make Westport the second‑largest producer of smelted pig iron in the nation by the 1850s, producing over 4,200 tons of white iron in one season. The iron was shipped from Westport docks via canal boats to markets and refineries elsewhere.

While blast furnaces had existed since the first century, they were revolutionized during the Industrial Revolution. Large enough to fit several men inside, these large, stone, tower-shaped structures were loaded with alternating layers of solid iron ore, limestone, and a purified coal known as “coke” from the top. Once the workers got the coal burning, they used large-scale bellows to inject air into the bottom, stoking the fires even more and reducing all three solid substances into a molten liquid mass at the bottom.

As that liquid metal settled, the limestone elements leached off the impurities from the iron into a substance known as slag that floated to the surface. Workers then skimmed the slag off the top and discarded it in large heaps where it cooled; pieces of this bluish, glassy “slag” can still be found on the lakeshore today. The liquid iron was then drained from the bottom into small ingots known as “pig iron,” each weighing between 12 and 20 pounds, that could be shipped and manufactured into virtually any kind of iron technology.

Beyond supporting the industrial revolution more broadly, the massive amounts of iron mined from the Adirondacks and produced on the shores of Lake Champlain also helped save the nation. During the Civil War, production centers like these gave the United States an enormous advantage, producing 20 times more pig iron than the Confederate insurrectionists. Iron from furnaces like this became the rifles, rails, and ammunition that helped liberate 3.5 million enslaved people, thereby preserving government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Town Hall–Lake View Grange No. 970 (22 Champlain Avenue)
Find this 1920 Colonial Revival Grange hall at Champlain Ave. Once a roller rink and social gathering place in the 1950s, the building is now home to Westport’s Town Hall. Its 2017 renovation restored its historic character while recent improvements showcase the town’s commitment to energy efficiency through solar power and heat pumps.

Hillside Cemetery (6577 Main Street)

Established in the early 1800s, Hillside Cemetery is the resting place of several Revolutionary War veterans, including early settlers who came north after the conflict. Their graves, often marked by simple fieldstones or later military plaques, connect the village to the nation’s founding era.

The earliest white settlers in Westport came to the region during the 1760s, after the French and Indian War settled longstanding disputes over the region and granted the territory (along with all of Canada, too) to the British. William Gilliland established an initial community known as Bessboro—named after his daughter, Bess—which was subsequently abandoned during the Revolutionary War when the British Army moved south from Montreal in 1777, during the same campaign that ended with the American victory at Saratoga. Continental Army veteran Major Hezekiah Barber became the first permanent settler in 1784, a year after the war ended. The Barber homestead is still owned by descendants of Hezekiah Barber today.

Westport has been permanently inhabited ever since, and this graveyard speaks to the many generations who worked to build and improve the town over the centuries. The variety of headstones reflects the diverse styles, eras, and cultures that have existed throughout the town’s history, from its pioneer families straight through to recent community leaders.

Essex County Fairgrounds (3 Sisco Street)
A classic American fairground design that your grandparents—and perhaps their grandparents—would recognize well. Home to an annual fair and major events since 1885, a quick loop within the Essex County Fairgrounds includes its Floral Hall, grandstand, and racetrack, all listed on the National Register.

The Depot Theatre & Old Train Station (6705 Main Street)

Built in 1876 by the Delaware & Hudson Railroad and expanded around 1908, this depot once connected Westport to bustling passenger lines carrying visitors, goods, and residents between New York City, Montreal, and the Adirondacks. The station shaped daily life here—mail and freight arrived by rail, families gathered to send loved ones off or welcome them home, and the depot buzzed with the rhythms of a community linked to the wider world. While Westport remains an active Amtrak stop today on the Adirondack line between New York City and Montreal, the restored train station also houses the Depot Theatre. This award-winning professional summer theater bridges Westport’s railway past to its vibrant cultural present.

Extend your Westport History Trail adventure by biking or driving to a few more historical locations

The Water of Wadhams (Rt 22 Bridge, Wadhams)

The hamlet of Wadhams flourished around the mid-1800s, when the Boquet River’s falls powered sawmills, gristmills, and tanneries that served nearby farms and villages. The river was the community’s lifeblood, driving the wheels that turned logs to lumber and grain to flour. Here you can still see the impressive waterfall beside the bridge in the center of Wadhams—a picturesque reminder of the hydro power that made this small Westport hamlet bustle with industry 150 years ago. Today’s Westport–Wadhams community is a testament to the strong historical ties between these population centers.

Camp Dudley (126 Camp Dudley Road)

Founded in 1885, Camp Dudley is the oldest continually operating boys’ camp in the country. Its traditions of outdoor adventure, community, and leadership have drawn generations of campers to the Westport lakeshore.

Stone Schoolhouse (Camp Dudley Road)

Now surrounded by a vineyard and sweeping mountain views, you can step into the entry and peer inside this one-room schoolhouse that served local farm families through the 1800s and early 1900s. Children of all ages learned their lessons side by side here, with one teacher guiding the whole class.

Are you Excited To Tour More?

Here’s a robust Westport History Guide with even more local places and stories. *Please Note: Some businesses have closed or changed since this brochure was printed in 2015; however, the early history remains intact and interesting!

 The Westport–Wadhams Community Alliance extends thanks to the Town of Westport and the Town Historian Phil Mero for supporting this history trail project. Learn more at westportny.net/history-of-westport.

 Thanks also to Ann Mason of the Safe Roads Walkable Westport task force for serving as editor and to Connor Williams, the supporting historian. A grant from AARP, with support from Toyota North America, made the sidewalk decals printed for this trail possible.

We’re also thankful for ROOST’s permission to use the Revolutionary icon design and proud to be a featured stop on the Lake Champlain Revolutionary Quest.