Rogers Rock and the great slide

Frontier legend on a real, named cliff

At the northern end of Lake George, about six miles south of Ticonderoga, a bare cliff drops abruptly from the hill once called Mt. Pelee, above Trout Brook, into the water hundreds of feet below. The hill is Rogers Rock, and its steep face Rogers Slide, and both are named for a frontier fighter and the most famous escape of the French and Indian War.

By 1758 the war had gone mostly France's way on that frontier. From Fort Carillon, which the British called Ticonderoga, French troops and their Indian allies probed the British line along Lake George, and the British, with fewer Indian allies of their own, relied on companies of colonial rangers to scout. Captain Robert Rogers led them. On 10 March 1758 he set out from Fort Edward with about 180 rangers and volunteer regulars, though the fort's commander had reason to think the French knew they were coming. On 13 March, marching on snowshoes through snow four feet deep with a steep mountain between them and the lake, they spotted what Rogers counted as ninety-six enemies, chiefly Indians, and sprang an ambush. As half his men gave chase without reloading, they ran into a second, larger force under Ensign de Langy. After an hour and a half of heavy fighting, Rogers' command was nearly destroyed, with more than 130 lost. One group that surrendered was killed when a scalp was found in a man's pocket. Rogers got away, shedding his regimental coat, with his commission in its pocket, and the French believed him dead. He reached Fort Edward on 15 March.

The legend grew from that escape. In one version Rogers, chased to the top of the hill, slid some 400 feet down the rock face to the frozen surface of the lake, a superhuman feat. In another he put his snowshoes on backwards so his tracks seemed to lead to the cliff edge, went down a nearby path and picked up his pack, and his pursuers, seeing a figure making off across the ice far below, took him for a man who had survived the leap, perhaps a god, and would not follow. There is no proof that either happened, but the rock quickly took his name. Rogers rebuilt his rangers and fought again at Carillon that July.

Today the Rogers Rock campground of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation carries his name, with swimming, boating, fishing and marked trails along the lake.