Congress made Vermont’s Lake Champlain a Great Lake, then took it back 18 days later

Vermont’s big water has centuries of secrets

Lake Champlain runs 120 miles along the Vermont-New York border, drops 400 feet at its deepest point, and holds 6.8 trillion gallons of water.

Congress called it the sixth Great Lake in 1998, then took it back 18 days later. The name didn’t stick, but the lake itself doesn’t need the title.

It has Revolutionary War shipwrecks sitting upright on the bottom, a 480-million-year-old fossil reef, and sunsets that drop behind an entire mountain range.

And that’s before you even get to the bike trail that rides straight into the middle of it.

The lake Champlain claimed for itself

The numbers alone are hard to picture. Lake Champlain covers 435 square miles, has 587 miles of shoreline, and holds more than 70 islands, three of which make up nearly all of Grand Isle County, Vermont.

The lake sits in a valley pinched between the Green Mountains to the east and the Adirondacks to the west, so almost everywhere you stand, you’re looking at mountain ranges on two sides and water in between.

It’s a big lake wearing big scenery, and it earns every bit of that brief congressional title.

Two nations and a thousand years of history on this water

Before any European set foot here, the Abenaki called this lake Bitawbagok, meaning “waters that lie between,” and the Mohawk called it Caniadari Guarunte, meaning “door of the country.”

French explorer Samuel de Champlain arrived in 1609 and gave the lake the name it carries today.

After that, the lake became a highway between the colonies and Canada, running straight through both the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War.

Fort Ticonderoga, originally built by the French in 1755, sits at the lake’s southern tip where the water meets Lake George.

Burlington’s waterfront pulls you in both directions

Burlington is the biggest city on the lake and the easiest place to base yourself.

Walk four blocks up from the water and you hit Church Street Marketplace, a pedestrian mall that USA Today named America’s No. 1 Public Square in 2022.

More than 100 shops and restaurants line the street alongside live performers and buildings that go back to the 1800s.

Walk back down toward the lake and Waterfront Park opens up with paths, picnic spots, and a direct view of the Adirondacks turning pink in the evening light.

Bike until the water is on both sides of you

The Island Line Trail starts at Oakledge Park in Burlington and follows the lakeshore for 14 miles, eventually riding you out onto the Colchester Causeway, a three-mile stretch of old railroad bed sitting in the middle of Lake Champlain.

Water runs on both sides of you. The trail is mostly flat and paved through Burlington, then packed gravel on the causeway.

About two-thirds of the way out, a 200-foot gap called “the Cut” breaks the causeway. A free seasonal bike ferry picks you up there and drops you on South Hero Island.

See a 30-foot lake monster at the ECHO Center

Right on Burlington’s waterfront, the ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain pulls in more than 167,000 visitors a year.

The LEED-certified building holds over 100 interactive exhibits and more than 70 species of fish, reptiles, and amphibians.

In July 2025, the museum opened a 15,000-gallon freshwater aquarium stocked with lake sturgeon, landlocked Atlantic salmon, and American eels.

Hanging from the ceiling above it all is a 30-foot sculpture of Champ, the lake’s legendary creature, part of a permanent exhibit on the folklore that’s followed this lake for generations.

Frederick Law Olmsted designed this farm to show off the lake

Seven miles south of Burlington, Shelburne Farms sits on 1,400 acres along the shore.

William Seward Webb and Lila Vanderbilt Webb built it in 1886 and hired Frederick Law Olmsted, the man behind Central Park, to design the grounds.

Olmsted divided the estate into farmland, forest, and parkland, then laid winding roads specifically to frame views of the lake and the mountains.

Today the property operates as a nonprofit working farm with about 125 Brown Swiss cows.

You can walk the trails, visit the children’s farmyard, tour the historic barns, and taste the cheddar made right there on-site.

Ethan Allen took this fort at dawn with 83 men

Fort Ticonderoga guards the southern end of Lake Champlain at the point where the lake meets Lake George.

On May 10, 1775, Ethan Allen led his Green Mountain Boys in a pre-dawn raid that caught the British garrison off guard and handed Americans their first offensive victory of the Revolutionary War.

Colonel Henry Knox then dragged the fort’s cannons by sled and oxen across frozen ground all the way to Boston, where the guns helped break the British siege.

The fort opened to the public in 1909 and now runs as a museum, research center, and living history site. In 2026, special programming marks the 250th anniversary of the Revolution.

300 shipwrecks sleep at the bottom of this lake

About 300 known shipwrecks rest on the bottom of Lake Champlain, covering everything from Revolutionary War gunboats to 19th-century canal boats and steamers.

The cold freshwater does something remarkable to wooden vessels. Many still have intact hulls, masts, and ship’s wheels sitting exactly where sailors left them.

In 1997, researchers found the Spitfire, a gunboat from the 1776 Battle of Valcour Island, sitting upright on the lake floor with its bow gun still in position.

The Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in Vergennes has spent more than 30 years studying these wrecks.

Dive the wrecks or watch a robot do it for you

Founded in 1982, the Lake Champlain Underwater Historic Preserve was one of the first state-sponsored shipwreck systems in the country.

Ten sites are open to divers right now, including canal boats, steamboats, a schooner, and a horse-powered ferry. Yellow mooring buoys mark each site, and underwater interpretive signs explain what you’re looking at.

Diving is free, but you need to register annually before going down. Not a diver?

The Lake Champlain Maritime Museum runs virtual tours and remotely operated vehicle footage of the wrecks so you can still see what’s down there.

These islands feel like a completely different world

The northern end of Lake Champlain holds a chain of islands that form Grand Isle County, Vermont’s smallest county.

The towns of South Hero, Grand Isle, North Hero, Isle La Motte, and Alburgh connect by bridges and causeways and move at a pace you don’t find on the mainland.

Isle La Motte is where Samuel de Champlain first stepped into what’s now Vermont in 1609. That spot is now St. Anne’s Shrine.

The same island holds the Chazy Fossil Reef, a U.S. National Natural Landmark with fossils dating back roughly 480 million years.

The Adirondack chair was born on this lake

Lake Champlain ferries have run between Vermont and New York for more than 250 years, and two crossings still operate today.

The lake holds more than 80 species of fish, and bass fishing here ranks among the best in North America.

Kayaking, sailing, and paddleboarding are all over the place, with rentals available in Burlington and other towns along the shore. When the day winds down, the Vermont side faces west.

The sun drops behind the Adirondack Mountains every evening, and the Adirondack chair you’re sitting in was first designed in the early 1900s right across the water in Westport, New York, for exactly this view.

Visit Lake Champlain in Vermont and New York

Burlington, Vermont, is your best starting point for the lake.

Burlington International Airport serves the city, and you can also drive in from Boston in about three and a half hours or from New York City in around five.

Burlington’s waterfront puts you steps from the ECHO Center, the Island Line Trail, and ferry departures.

From there, the lake stretches north toward the Champlain Islands and south toward Fort Ticonderoga, giving you more ground to cover than most visitors expect when they first pull into town.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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