Lake Champlainan interactive resource by Craig W. French
HISTORY
12,000 YEARSBefore 1609The lake had people on it
for a hundred and twenty centuries before Champlain wrote it down. The archaeology, the
Western Abenaki homeland of Bitawbagw, and the recognition dispute set out in two columns
because it is not settled.
JULY 1609Champlain’s LakeWhat he claimed to
have seen, checked against the lake as it is — the distances in leagues, the islands, the
fish, and the one battle that gave the lake its European name.
1609–1870The War RoadThe corridor everyone fought
over, and the two naval battles the wind decided — Valcour in 1776 and Plattsburgh in
1814.
1809–1930The SteamboatsEvery steamboat that ever
ran here, drawn from the 1930 book — years in service, tonnage, and where six of them
ended.
READ ITThe BookOgden Ross's The Steamboats of Lake
Champlain, 1930, all 193 pages, searchable. Public domain since January.
1604–1612Champlain’s VoyagesThe primary source, 373 leaves of it: Otis’s translation of 1878, and on leaf 304 the chapter where he comes down the Iroquois river and finds the lake.
59 SITESThe Wreck CensusThree bodies hold pieces of
this and none publishes it as data. Joined here — and the positions Vermont withholds stay
withheld.
×75 POWERWhat the Lake CarriedPotash, wool, lumber,
Adirondack iron — each with its collapse. And the series this page could not build: canal
tonnage by year.
BIOLOGY
5,249 KMThe EelsEvery eel in this lake was born in the
Sargasso Sea and has to get back there to breed. The road, the two fishways on the Richelieu,
and what the counts at Chambly have done since 1998.
THIRTEEN SEASONSSummers of BloomsTwenty-two thousand
volunteer reports, 2012 to 2024. Two bays account for nearly all of it, and always have.
4,112 TOWSThe MusselsTwenty-eight years of veliger
counts, the water chestnut and the spiny waterflea — and three analyzes this page ran and
then refused to publish, with the reasons.
4 KM AWAYThe Fish, and What Is ComingLamprey
wounding, the end of lake trout stocking after seventy years, a sturgeon that has not
recovered — and a round goby closing from two directions, four kilometers (2.5 miles) off on one of them.
GEOLOGY
1.1 BILLION YEARSHow the Valley Was MadeA cross-section
from the Adirondacks to the Green Mountains, run backwards through two collisions, a tropical
sea and a mile of ice.
THREE SITESThree PlacesThe Champlain Thrust, where
older rock sits on younger; the Chazy reef, among the oldest known; and a whale skeleton found
ten miles (16 km) from any sea.
WEBGLThe Lake in 3-DThe basin with the water taken
out: four hundred feet (122 m) of trench, the Inland Sea shelf and the narrows at Crown Point,
turned and tilted in the browser.
HYDROLOGY
LIVEThe SeicheThe lake in section, from four gauges
and two thermistor chains, updated daily — and under it the internal seiche, a summer of
the thermocline at thirty-nine depths and thirty-four summers of the lake warming at the
surface but not the bottom.
MAPThe WatershedEvery river and stream that ends up
in the lake, colored by phosphorus, farmland, road salt or calcium — with the satellite over
the water.
COMPUTEDWhat Goes In, What Comes OutWeighing the lake
from its own depth contours, closing the budget against eighty-eight years at the outlet, and
finding a bay that takes a quarter of the phosphorus.
SURVEYEDWhere the Lake Goes When It RisesLidar-mapped
shorelines at each lake level from a normal summer to above the 2011 record. Almost all of it
is one river's floor.
1816–2026When the Lake ClosedTwo hundred and ten winters
of whether the lake froze over. It closed every year of the 1800s and nine times since
2001.