Stop #15 | Address: Waterworks Park, Port Clinton
In 1912, two monuments were dedicated by the Ohio Society & Daughters of the American Revolution and the Ohio State Archaeological & History Society to mark a two-mile course of what today is Fulton Street in Port Clinton. The course was used by General William Henry Harrison’s American soldiers to drag boats overland for crossing Lake Erie.
These two pyramidal monuments stand at either end of what is known as the ‘DeLery Portage of 1754’, today’s Fulton Street. One tablet at the south end of Fulton marks the site of Old Fort Sandoski. Facing Sandusky Bay, opposite the mouth of the Sandusky River, Old Fort Sandoski is the first fort built by white men within the present limits of Ohio. The fort’s location was confirmed by the discovery in 1906 of journals written by French Army engineer Lt. Chevalier Chaussegros de Lery. In 1754 de Lery led a large military contingent from Quebec to Fort Detroit. His route took him along the southern shore of Lake Erie into Sandusky Bay. He and his 258 men arrived at the site of the fort to discover that it had been abandoned. His journal included a sketch of the site. The Old Fort Sandoski tablets detail the Indian-British Expedition of 1760, French Expedition of 1754, and American Expedition of 1813.
The other tablet at the north end of Fulton Street is the Harrison-Perry Embarkation monument and overlooks Lake Erie near the old mouth of the Portage River. It is located at the terminus of the portage where Indians and French explorers landed. General Harrison and his soldiers embarked from this area in 1813 for the conquest of Canada’s Fort Detroit.
About “Tracking the Troops, Tippecanoe & Perry, Too!” This driving tour is a five-county collaborative project with Wyandot, Seneca, Sandusky, Wood and Ottawa counties that takes you on a self-guided driving tour following the military trail of General William Henry Harrison during the War of 1812. Harrison would later become the ninth president of the United States and has the shortest presidency, dying from pneumonia one month after having taken the oath of office.
