Lake Champlain, Vermont’s “Great Lake” | New England by the Numbers

1609
year French explorer Samuel de Champlain sailed into the Lake Champlain region

6.8 trillion
gallons of water: Champlain’s estimated volume

120 & 12
miles: Champlain’s length and maximum width, more than three times the size of New England’s second-largest lake, Moosehead in Maine

fifty-four
public beaches

4000
canal boats plying Champlain’s waters between 1819 and 1940

Three Hundred
documented shipwrecks on the lake’s bottom

eighty-one
species of fish in the lake

1
illustrious and oft-sighted lake monster, “Champ”

450-480 million
years: age of Champlain’s Chazy Reef, one of the oldest in the world

400
feet: Champlain’s maximum depth

seventy-one
islands (including one that’s an entire county)

27
daily round-trip summer ferry crossings between Charlotte, Vermont, and Essex, New York

300
recorded sightings of “Champ” since 1609

Julia Shipley

Contributing editor Julia Shipley’s stories celebrate New Englanders’ enduring connection to place. Her long-form lyric essay, “Adam’s Mark,” was selected as one of The Boston Globe's Best New England Books of 2014.

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