Template:Wp-Crown Point, New York-History

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Two European forts were built by colonists because of its strategic location at the narrows of Lake Champlain. The forts preceded organization of the town by more than half a century: first was Fort Saint-Frédéric built by the French in 1731, who came to this area from their colonial settlements to the north at Quebec and Montreal. They competed with the British for the fur trade with Native Americans in the area.

During the Seven Years' War (known as the French and Indian War in North America), the British gained control of this area. Before that, the French retreated and destroyed their fort to keep it out of the hands of the British. The latter built Fort Crown Point in 1759, then the largest earthen fort in their colonies. With British victory in the war, after 1763 France ceded all its territory in North America east of the Mississippi River to Britain.

During colonial times and the American Revolutionary War, the fort at Crown Point continued to be important for its strategic location – on the west shore of Lake Champlain about north of Fort Ticonderoga, about a day's travel by the modes of that time period. After the failure of the patriot American invasion of Canada in 1776, Fort Crown Point represented the northernmost area under American control. During the British Saratoga campaign in 1777, General John Burgoyne organized a supply magazine here to support his Siege of Ticonderoga.

The town of Crown Point, located a few miles south of the 1759 Fort, is an original town of the county, established in 1788 following the Revolution and before the organization of Essex County. Parts of Crown Point were later drawn off to form the town of Elizabethtown (1798). The modern European-American settlement of the town began around 1800 with an influx of settlers from Vermont.

Crown Point holds the New York state January record low of .