Lake Champlain
Lake Champlain is a large natural freshwater lake in North America. With a length of and surface area over, it lies mostly between the U.S. states of New York and Vermont, but also extends north into the Canadian province of Quebec.
The cities of Burlington, Vermont, and Plattsburgh, New York, are the largest settlements on the lake, and towards the south lies the historic Fort Ticonderoga in New York. The Quebec portion is in the regional county municipalities of Le Haut-Richelieu and Brome-Missisquoi. There are a number of islands in the lake; the largest include Grand Isle, Isle La Motte and North Hero: all part of Grand Isle County, Vermont. Because of Lake Champlain's connections both to the St. Lawrence Seaway via the Richelieu River, and to the Hudson River via the Champlain Canal, Lake Champlain is sometimes referred to as "The Sixth Great Lake".
The lake's coastline is relatively undeveloped, and hosts a number of state parks, including ones at North Hero and Button Bay in Vermont, and Cumberland Bay in New York. Much of New York's shoreline is located within the larger Adirondack Park. The lake is a significant part of local culture, especially Champ, a lake monster that allegedly resides there.
Geology
The Champlain Valley is the northernmost unit of a landform system known as the Great Appalachian Valley, which stretches between Quebec, Canada, to the north, and Alabama, U.S., to the south. The Champlain Valley is a physiographic section of the larger Saint Lawrence Valley, which in turn is part of the larger Appalachian physiographic division.Lake Champlain is one of numerous large lakes scattered in an arc through Labrador, in Canada, the northern United States, and the Northwest Territories of Canada.
Hydrology
Lake Champlain covers approximately, making it the thirteenth-largest lake by area in the U.S. It lies at an elevation of, is, has a shoreline, averages in width, has an average depth of, a maximum depth of, and holds some of water.Lake Champlain is in the Champlain Valley between the Green Mountains of Vermont and the Adirondack Mountains of New York, drained northward by the Richelieu River into the St. Lawrence River at Sorel-Tracy, Quebec, northeast and downstream of Montreal. The Champlain basin covers and collects waters from the northwestern slopes of the Green Mountains and the eastern portion of the Adirondack Mountains, reaching as far south as the Lake George in New York. The lake drains nearly half of Vermont, and approximately 250,000 people get their drinking water from it.
The lake is fed in Vermont by the LaPlatte, Lamoille, Missisquoi, Poultney and Winooski rivers, along with Lewis Creek, Little Otter Creek and Otter Creek. In New York, it is fed by the Ausable, Boquet, Great Chazy, La Chute, Little Ausable, Little Chazy, Salmon and Saranac rivers, along with Putnam Creek. In Quebec, it is fed by the Pike River. It is connected to the Hudson River by the Champlain Canal.
Parts of the lake freeze each winter, and in some winters the entire lake surface freezes, referred to as "closing". In July and August, the lake temperature reaches an average of.
Chazy Reef
The Chazy Reef is an extensive Ordovician carbonate rock formation that extends from Tennessee to Quebec and Newfoundland. The oldest reefs are around "The Head" of the south end of Isle La Motte; slightly younger reefs are found at the Fisk Quarry, and the youngest are in fields to the north.History
The lake has long acted as a border between indigenous nations, much as it is today between the states of New York and Vermont. The lake is located at the frontier between Abenaki and Mohawk traditional territories. The official toponym for the lake, according to the orthography established by the Grand Council of Waban-aki Nation, is Pitawbagok, meaning "middle lake", "lake in between" or "double lake".The Mohawk language name in modern orthography, as standardized in 1993, is Kaniatarakwà:ronte, meaning "a bulged lake" or "lake with a bulge in it". An alternate name is Kaniá:tare tsi kahnhokà:ronte, meaning "door of the country" or "lake to the country". The lake is an important eastern gateway to Iroquois Confederacy lands.
The lake was named after the French explorer Samuel de Champlain, who encountered it in July 1609. While the ports of Burlington, Vermont, Port Henry, New York, and Plattsburgh, New York, today are primarily used by small craft, ferries and lake cruise ships, they were of substantial commercial and military importance in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Colonial America and the Revolutionary War
allocated concessions all along Lake Champlain to French settlers and built forts to defend the waterways. In colonial times, Lake Champlain was used as a water passage between the Saint Lawrence and Hudson valleys. Travelers found it easier to journey by boats and sledges on the lake rather than go overland on unpaved and frequently mud-bound roads. The lake's northern tip at Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec is just from Montreal, Quebec. The southern tip at Whitehall is north of Glens Falls on the Hudson River and north of Albany, New York.Forts were built at Ticonderoga and Crown Point to control passage on the lake in colonial times. Important battles were fought at Ticonderoga in 1758 and 1775. During the Revolutionary War, the British and Americans conducted a frenetic shipbuilding race through the spring and summer of 1776, at opposite ends of the lake, and fought a significant naval engagement on October 11 at the Battle of Valcour Island. While it was a tactical defeat for the Americans, and the small fleet led by Benedict Arnold was almost destroyed, the Americans gained a strategic victory; the British invasion was delayed long enough so the approach of winter prevented the fall of these forts until the following year. In this period, the Continental Army gained strength and was victorious at Saratoga.
Beginning of the Revolutionary War
At the start of the Revolutionary War, British forces occupied the Champlain Valley. However, it did not take long for rebel leaders to realize the importance of controlling Lake Champlain. Early in the war, the colonial militias attempted to expel the British from Boston; however, this undertaking could not be achieved without heavy artillery. The British forts at Ticonderoga and Crown Point, on Lake Champlain, were known to have ample supplies of artillery and were weakly-manned by the British. Thus, the colonial militias devised a plan to take control of the two forts and bring the guns back to the fight in Boston.The necessity of controlling the two forts at Ticonderoga and Crown Point placed Lake Champlain as a strategic arena during the Revolutionary War. By taking control of these forts, Americans not only gained heavy artillery, but control of a vast water highway as well: Lake Champlain provided a direct invasion route to British Canada. However, had the British controlled the lake, they could have divided the colonies of New England and further depleted the Continental Army.
The Continental Army's first offensive action took place in May 1775, three weeks after the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Ethan Allen, accompanied by 200 Green Mountain Boys, was ordered to capture Fort Ticonderoga and retrieve supplies for the fight in Boston. Benedict Arnold shared the command with Allen, and, in early May 1775, they captured Fort Ticonderoga, Crown Point and the southern Loyalist settlement of Skenesborough. As a result of Allen's offensive attack on the Champlain Valley in 1775, the American forces controlled the Lake Champlain waterway.
Siege of Quebec: 1775–1776
The Continental Army realized the strategic advantage of controlling Lake Champlain, as it leads directly to the heart of Quebec. Immediately after taking Forts Ticonderoga and Crown Point, the Americans began planning an attack on British Canada. The American siege of Quebec was a two-pronged assault and occurred throughout the winter of 1775–1776. Brigadier General Richard Montgomery led the first assault up the Champlain Valley into Canada, while Benedict Arnold led a second army to Quebec via the Maine wilderness.Despite the strategic advantage of controlling a direct route to Quebec by way of the Champlain Valley, the American siege of British Canada during the winter of 1775 failed. The Continental Army mistakenly assumed that it would receive support from the Canadians upon their arrival at Quebec. This was not the case, and the rebel army struggled to take Quebec with diminishing supplies, support, and harsh northern winter weather.
The Continental Army was forced to camp outside Quebec's walls for the winter, with reinforcements from New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Connecticut allowing the soldiers to maintain their siege of the city. However, smallpox descended on both the sieging forces and their reinforcements and savaged the American force. The reinforcements traveled hundreds of miles up the frozen Lake Champlain and St. Lawrence River, but were too late and too few to influence a successful siege of Quebec. In May 1776, with the arrival of a British convoy carrying 10,000 British and Hessian troops to Canada, the Continental forces retreated back down the Champlain Valley to reevaluate their strategy.
"I know of no better method than to secure the important posts of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and by building a number of armed vessels to command the lakes, otherwise the forces now in Canada will be brought down upon us as quick as possible, having nothing to oppose them...They will doubtless try to construct some armed vessels and then endeavor to penetrate the country toward New York.".
Both British and American forces spent the summer of 1776 building their naval fleets, at opposite ends of Lake Champlain. By the October 1776, the Continental Army had 16 operating naval vessels on Lake Champlain: a great increase to the four small ships they had at the beginning of the summer. General Benedict Arnold commanded the American naval fleet on Lake Champlain, which was composed of volunteers and soldiers drafted from the Northern Army. With great contrast to the Continental navy, experienced Royal Navy officers, British seamen and Hessian artillerymen manned the British fleet on Lake Champlain. By the end of the summer of 1776, the opposing armies were prepared to battle over the strategic advantage of controlling Lake Champlain.