History reburied? NY's 1755 battle site covered up

LAKE GEORGE, N.Y. - (AP) -- The French and Indian War battle won here by green Colonial troops is just a footnote in most history books, but the way Randy Patten sees it, the New England farmers who fell during an ambush that opened the fighting didn't need to be buried a second time, 250 years later.

In the 1990s, a businessman was granted permission by the town of Lake George to fill in his vacant, sloping property. The land borders the wooded ravine where about 1,000 British Colonial troops and 200 of their Mohawk Indian allies were ambushed by a larger force of French and Indians on the morning of Sept. 8, 1755.

The ravine was part of the route for a wilderness road traveled by such 18th-century figures as Paul Revere, Benedict Arnold, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.