Lake Champlain
Lake Champlain (/ʃæmˈpleɪn/ sham-PLAYN; French: Lac Champlain) is a natural freshwater lake in North America. It mostly lies between the US states of New York and Vermont, but also extends north into the Canadian province of Quebec.[3]
This article is about the lake. For the Canadian steamer, see SS Lake Champlain. For US Naval vessels with this name, see USS Lake Champlain. For other uses, see Champlain (disambiguation).Lake Champlain
New York/Vermont in the United States; and Quebec in Canada
8,234 sq mi (21,326 km2)
Canada, United States
107 mi (172 km)[1]
14 mi (23 km)
514 sq mi (1,331 km2)
64 ft (19.5 m)
400 ft (122 m)[2]
6.2 cu mi (25.8 km3)
3.3 years
587 mi (945 km)
95 to 100 ft (29 to 30 m)
80 (Grand Isle, North Hero, Isle La Motte, see list)
The New York portion of the Champlain Valley includes the eastern parts of Clinton County and Essex County. Most of this area is part of the Adirondack Park. There are recreational facilities in the park and along the relatively undeveloped coastline of the lake. The cities of Plattsburgh, New York, and Burlington, Vermont, are on the lake's western and eastern shores, respectively, and the town of Ticonderoga, New York, is in the southern part of the region. 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".[4]
Natural history[edit]
In 2010, the estimate of cormorant population, now classified as a nuisance species because they take so much of the lake fish, ranged from 14,000 to 16,000. A Fish and Wildlife commissioner said that the ideal population would be about 3,300, amounting to 7.8/sq mi (3/km2). Cormorants had disappeared from the lake (and all northern lakes) due to the use of DDT in the 1940s and 1950s, which made their eggs more fragile and reduced breeding populations.[63]
Ring-billed gulls are also considered a nuisance, and measures have been taken to reduce their population. Authorities are trying to encourage the return of black-crowned night herons, cattle egrets and great blue herons, which disappeared during the time DDT was being widely used.[63]
In 1989, UNESCO designated the area around Lake Champlain as the Champlain-Adirondack Biosphere Reserve.[64][65]
Infrastructure[edit]
Lake crossings[edit]
The Alburgh Peninsula (also known as the Alburgh Tongue), extending south from the Quebec shore of the lake into Vermont, and Province Point, the southernmost tip of a small promontory approximately 2 acres (1 ha) in size[66] a few miles to the northeast of the community of East Alburgh, Vermont, are connected by land to the rest of the state only via Canada. This is a distinction shared with the state of Alaska, Point Roberts, Washington, and the Northwest Angle in Minnesota. All of these are practical exclaves of the United States contiguous with Canada. Unlike the other cases, highway bridges across the lake provide direct access to the Alburgh peninsula from within the United States (from three directions), but Province Point is still accessible by land only through Canada.
Surroundings[edit]
Major cities[edit]
Burlington, Vermont (pop. 44,743, 2020 census) is the largest city on the lake. The second and third most-populated cities/towns are Plattsburgh, New York, and South Burlington, Vermont, respectively. The fourth-largest community is the town of Colchester.