The state and city blew it once before when Fort Orange was rediscovered in 1968 by historian John Wolcott. Wolcott had pinpointed the site on a 1790 map drawn by Simeon Dewitt, a meticulous Albany surveyor.

Wolcott submitted his map to a Department of Transportation official and Paul Huey, an archeologist who later oversaw the Fort Orange excavations.

Wolcott's map helped Huey convince DOT to allow excavations, although DOT confined them to a small wedge of property.

Excavations occurred from September 1970 to March 1971. About 10 percent of the entire fort was excavated, according to a map published by Huey in the Dutch journal KNOB in Amsterdam in 1985.