Mount Independence became a stop for early tourists. It is likely that future U.S. presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison visited in their 1791 tour of lakes George and Champlain. Historian and travel writer Benson J. Lossing visited for his 1853 The Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution. He described the Mount as covered with second growth trees except where the parade grounds were.Lossing, Benson J. The Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution. Harper& Brothers (1860), vol. 1, pgs. 147–148.
