Old Fort Erie is located just south of the town on Lakeshore Road. There have been at least three forts here because of its strategic site at the entrance to the Niagara River. British forces established a post here at the end of the war with France in 1746. Early forts were wooden but a stone fort was started in 1805.

The Fort Erie that took part in the War of 1812 was completed in 1806 and destroyed by retreating American forces in May 1813. It was rebuilt by the British the following December, only to be captured again by the Americans in 1814 and subsequently destroyed again.

Fort Erie

The present fort is a rebuilding of the stone fort and was begun in 1937 by the Niagara Parks Commission. It features red-coated British soldiers and green-coated Canadian militia, and, if you time it right, you may see a re-enactment of the 1814 Battle of Fort Erie.

If you park at the Old Fort, you can tour the fort and imagine what it must have been like in those days. Look across the lake toward Buffalo. At that time, about 1814, Buffalo was the main town of the Iroquois Confederacy. Onondaga in New York Province had been the head town but trouble in the Mohawk Valley during and after the Revolutionary War had convinced the Iroquois to move to the Niagara region. In 1814, there were few European settlers in what is now Buffalo.

Try to spot an object floating on the lake so that you can see the speed of the water as it rushes toward the Peace Bridge and the Niagara River. The combination of the rushing river and rapids at the entrance of the Niagara River made the west (Canadian) side of the river the favoured side for vessels heading for Lake Erie from Chippawa until the Welland Canal was extended to Port Colborne. The port of Waterloo, where the Canadian side of the Peace Bridge is now, was the destination of vessels as horses or oxen pulled them from Chippawa against the flow of the river. Going in the other direction, vessels would leave from Waterloo and would be carried by the river toward Chippawa.

The town of Fort Erie was formed from the villages of Waterloo and Victoria. Early settlers in the area were United Empire Loyalists, many former Butler's Rangers, who settled around here in 1784. They included the families of Brenner, House, Plato, and Wintermute. Gradually a community built up around the ferry, which ran across the Niagara River to another small community called Black Rock. In 1816, the community on the Canadian side received the name Waterloo. Besides the ferry, the area had a gristmill. This was owned by James Kerby and his partner Robert Grant. Kerby moved from Queenston to Waterloo in 1824 and became a force in the community. He owned the ferry and also became the local customs agent. In the rebellion in 1837, Kerby commanded the Queen's Niagara Fencibles, a militia unit recruited and organised by him. It was Col. Kerby who was in command of the troop of cavalry that almost captured William Lyon Mackenzie when he tried to flee to the United States after the abortive rebellion.

In 1857, the Grand Trunk Railway proposed a railway bridge across the Niagara River at the south end. This was delayed by the American Civil War and its aftermath. Finally, in 1870, the engineering firm of Gzowski-MacPherson was awarded a contract to build a single track bridge to span the river from Fort Erie to Buffalo. The bridge opened on November 3, 1873. There was a small community cxalled Victoria at the Canadian end of the bridge and it began to grow around the bridge. It changed its name several times over the years, including International Bridge and Bridgeburg.