Fort Niagara on the Canada-USA Border

Fort Niagara has been a militarily important location since 1679 when the French established a trading outpost. The British took it over in 1759 and they ceded it to the new United States of America in the 1796 Treaty of Paris. During the War of 1812, the British captured the Fort and held it until the war was concluded in 1815. During World War II it served as a Prisoner of War camp for captured German soldiers. It remained a U.S. military outpost until 1962 when it was decommissioned and became a New York State Park.

I chose this location outside the Fort (rather than inside it) as this location has a number of Borders in it.

Geographically it is on the edge of the Niagara River; a border between Land and Water. This is where the Niagara River enters Lake Ontario. This boundary has been very important in the region and has resulted in numerous conflicts.

Politically it shows the Border between the United States (New York) and Canada (Ontario). Fort Niagara and Fort George (located across the river on the point of land behind the cemetery) played a large part in the fight over control of the Great Lakes region. The outer earthworks and towers of Fort Niagara can be seen to the right of the lighthouse.

Metaphysically, it has the Border between life and death in the historical cemetery (to the left of start). This cemetery holds a number of the soldiers that have died in the numerous conflicts that have taken place here.

This panorama was very challenging and I learned a number of useful tidbits. One, it is very difficult to keep batteries warm enough for digital cameras to function when it is below freezing and there is a stiff breeze off of Lake Ontario. Second, that cubic VRs are very sensitive to parallax errors (this was my first try at a cubic panorama, PTMac 4 is way cool). And finally, that partly cloudy conditions are a real pain when taking the required 60 photos and the resulting lighting conditions go from cloudy to full sunlight every minute or so. I salvaged an acceptable pano out of it but could not eliminate all of the color & brightness variations.

USA-Canada / USA-New York

Lat: 43° 15' 42.09" N
Long: 80° 4' 36.65" W

Elevation: 255

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: High. Pinpoints the exact spot.

Olympus D-40Zoom 4.0mp Digital camera mounted on a standard tripod. The pano was produced using PTMac 4.0 on an Apple PowerBook G4 1.5GHz running OS-X 10.4