The lake's original name is
Kaniá:taro’kte, sometimes transcribed as Andia-ta-roc-te. It was named this by
Mohawk members of the
Iroquois Confederation.
James Fenimore Cooper in his
narrative Last of the Mohicans called it the
Horican, after a tribe which may have lived there, because he felt the original name was too hard to pronounce. The first European visitor to the area,
Samuel de Champlain, noted the lake in his journal on July 3, 1609, but did not name it. In 1646, the
French Canadian Jesuit missionary
St. Isaac Jogues, the first European to view the lake, named it
Lac du Saint-Sacrement (Lake of the Holy Sacrament), and its exit stream,
La Chute ("The Fall"). The 1696 proposed war plan of
John Nelson referred to the subject as "Lake Mohawk". On August 28, 1755,
William Johnson led British colonial forces to occupy the area in the
French and Indian War. He renamed the lake as Lake George for King
George II. On September 8, 1755 the
Battle of Lake George was fought between the forces of Britain and France resulting in a strategic victory for the British and their Iroquois allies. After the battle, Johnson ordered the construction of a military fortification at the southern end of the lake. The fort was named
Fort William Henry after the King's grandson
Prince William Henry, a younger brother of the later King
George III. In September, the French responded by beginning construction of Fort Carillon, later called
Fort Ticonderoga, on a point where
La Chute enters Lake Champlain. These fortifications controlled the easy water route between Canada and colonial
New York. A French army, and their native allies under general
Louis-Joseph de Montcalm laid
siege to Fort William Henry in 1757 and burned it down after the British surrender. During the British retreat to
Fort Edward they were ambushed and massacred by natives allied to the French, in what would become known as
The Massacre at Fort William Henry. On March 13, 1758, an attempted
attack on that fort by irregular forces led by
Robert Rogers was one of the most daring raids of that war. The unorthodox (to Europeans) tactics of
Rogers' Rangers are seen as inspiring the creation of similar forces in later conflicts—including the
United States Army Rangers. Lake George's key position on the
Montreal–
New York water route made possession of the forts at either end—particularly Ticonderoga—strategically crucial during the
American Revolution. Later in the war, British General
John Burgoyne's decision to bypass the easy water route to the
Hudson River that Lake George offered and, instead, attempt to reach the Hudson through the marshes and forests at the southern end of
Lake Champlain, led to the British defeat at
Saratoga. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison traveled through Lake George during their Northern tour in 1791, sailing twenty five miles up to Lake Champlain. On May 31, 1791,
Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to his daughter, "Lake George is without comparison, the most beautiful water I ever saw; formed by a contour of mountains into a basin... finely interspersed with islands, its water limpid as crystal, and the mountain sides covered with rich groves... down to the water-edge: here and there precipices of rock to checker the scene and save it from monotony." In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Lake George was a common spot sought out by well-known artists, including
Martin Johnson Heade,
John F. Kensett,
E. Charlton Fortune,
Frank Vincent DuMond and
Georgia O'Keeffe.
Ethan Allen accident On October 2, 2005, at 2:55 p.m., the
Ethan Allen, a glass-enclosed tourist boat carrying 47 passengers and operated by Shoreline Cruises, capsized during calm weather on the lake. According to reports from a local newspaper, 20 people (mostly senior citizens) died. Initial reports indicated that the tour group was from Canada, but these reports were later found to be incorrect. It was later determined that the group was from the
Trenton, Michigan, area on a week-long fall trip along the East Coast by bus and rail, organized by Trenton's parks and recreation department and arranged through a Canadian company. Police said they had never seen a disaster of this magnitude on the lake. The captain survived and cooperated with police. The
National Transportation Safety Board investigation of the incident revealed that, although the boat was rated to carry 50 people when it was manufactured in 1966, subsequent alterations to the boat's design had greatly reduced its stability. At the time of the accident, the boat should have been rated to carry no more than 14 passengers. On February 5, 2007, the captain, Richard Paris, and the company that owned the boat, Shoreline Cruises, were indicted for having only one crew member aboard the boat. More serious charges were not filed because neither the captain nor the owners were aware they were violating safety standards. ==Water quality==