A surprise dead-of-night attack helped lead to US independence from the British. Now, a series of events are commemorating the region's pivotal role in shaping the nascent nation.

In the violet-grey twilight before dawn in May 1775, a skeleton crew of soldiers were asleep inside Fort Ticonderoga, a British-held garrison on the banks of Lake Champlain in New York's Adirondack region, when a series of shouts rang out. Rushing to their posts, the men were stunned by the sight of six dozen American soldiers streaming over the fort's walls, flintlock rifles in hand, demanding surrender.

With the British outnumbered and taken off guard, American victory was swift and bloodless. The fort's commander, sergeants, gunners and artillerymen were imprisoned and the invading forces captured 100 cannons and valuable weapons for the Continental Army. The surprise attack was a pivotal moment in the lead-up to the American War of Independence and marked the Continental forces' first offensive victory of the war that led to the United States' founding in 1776.

This year, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the conflict that shaped the nation, Fort Ticonderoga is hosting a series of new museum exhibits alongside its regular lineup of historical reenactments, guided tours and boat cruises – all of which provides travellers with a great jumping-off point to explore a region replete in Revolutionary War history.

Lake Champlain is a vast expanse that extends for roughly 435 square miles, straddling the borders of western Vermont and eastern New York and spilling into the Richelieu and St Lawrence rivers, which stretch north to Montreal and Quebec City in Canada. As Fort Ticonderoga curator Matthew Keagle told me, this made the waterway and its most prominent garrisons – Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point, located 10 miles south – key locations for the movement of British troops, supplies and intelligence during the colonial period (roughly 1600 through 1776).

Emboldened by the Massachusetts militiamen who defended the towns of Lexington and Concord against British forces and initiated the war a month earlier in April 1775, two of the US's more colourful Revolutionary War figures turned north-west towards Lake Champlain. Ethan Allen, leader of the scrappy Green Mountain Boys militia, and Benedict Arnold, an ambitious, impetuous merchant whose name would later become synonymous with treachery, reluctantly agreed to share command of a dead-of-night attack on Ticonderoga.

"What was effectively a defensive war against the British… now turns into something very different," said Keagle, smartly dressed in a royal blue coat and knee-high boots, not unlike those depicted in the famous painting Capture of Fort Ticonderoga, which the historian stood in front of. "It dramatically changes the scope of the conflict."

The weapons captured at the fort........

© BBC