This marker at Bemis Heights records the winter passage of Henry Knox and the artillery train he transported from Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point to George Washington’s army outside Boston. In late 1775, the Continental forces besieging Boston possessed too few heavy guns to threaten the British army and Royal Navy effectively. Knox, a young Boston bookseller whose study of military science had earned Washington’s confidence, proposed bringing the captured Lake Champlain artillery across New York and Massachusetts. Washington authorized the mission in November.

At Ticonderoga, Knox selected fifty-nine cannon, mortars, howitzers, and smaller pieces. Their combined weight made the expedition an extraordinary logistical challenge. The guns traveled down Lake George by boat and then overland on sledges pulled by oxen and horses. Weather alternated between inadequate snow, dangerous ice, and severe winter conditions. Equipment failed, animals became exhausted, and some cannon broke through frozen waterways. Knox and his crews repeatedly improvised, hired additional teams, and recovered their loads.

The route through the upper Hudson Valley passed this vicinity before continuing through Saratoga, Halfmoon, Albany, Kinderhook, and toward the Berkshire crossings. The present marker stands immediately south of the later Saratoga battlefield. In 1775–1776, however, the landscape’s significance came from its river road and its connection between Lake Champlain and Albany. The same north-south corridor would become strategically important again during Burgoyne’s invasion and the Saratoga campaign of 1777.

Knox’s train reached Cambridge by late January 1776. The artillery then supplied Washington with the means to break the stalemate around Boston. On the night of March 4–5, American troops fortified Dorchester Heights and emplaced cannon commanding the town and harbor. British commander William Howe prepared an attack, but weather intervened, and he ultimately evacuated his army and Loyalist refugees by sea. The British departed on March 17, giving the American cause an early and highly visible victory.

New York erected this bronze marker in 1926 as part of a series created for the Revolution’s sesquicentennial. Its relief of Knox supervising ox-drawn sledges and its route map turn the roadside into a memorial to military transportation. No battle occurred at the marker during Knox’s passage, and the original road alignment and surrounding landscape have changed. The historic event was the movement itself. Each mile required coordination among soldiers, teamsters, local officials, innkeepers, craftsmen, and residents who supplied animals and assistance. The Bemis Heights marker commemorates their part in carrying captured British weapons toward Boston and converting the victory at Ticonderoga into the artillery advantage that forced the British evacuation.