Did you know...

• Construction of the Burlington Breakwater began in 1836 as a part of a federal program to improve harbors on Lake Champlain. Improvements to Lake Champlain harbors was necessitated by the increase in commercial traffic on the lake after the opening of the Champlain Canal in 1823, connecting the lake with the Hudson River.

• The Burlington Breakwater is a significant example of 19th century timber crib construction.

• A lightkeeper’s residence, destined for Buffalo, New York, arrived in Burlington, Vermont. It was installed on the breakwater but remained vacant for a decade. It was sold at auction and relocated to the city, where it remains as a private residence.

• The General Butler, an 80-foot sailing canal schooner, crashed into the breakwater during a violent storm on December 9, 1876. The ship’s captain, William Montgomery, was able to off-load his passenger and crew onto the breakwater. Fortunately, they were rescued by James Wakefield and his son in a rowboat.

• The wreck of the General Butler is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is also a State of Vermont Underwater Historic Preserve. There are marker buoys at the fore and aft ends of the shipwreck, which is located on the outside edge of the breakwater near the south end.

• The basin area was filled in during the 1860s and the Pine Street Barge Canal was created. This canal is currently an EPA superfund site, filled with byproducts of the coal yards that replaced the timber mill industry, which declined after the 1897 Lumber Tariff.

• The Burlington Bay Horse Ferry, the only known surviving example of a turntable “team-boat”, is located at the bottom of Lake Champlain near the north end of the Burlington Breakwater.

• The Burlington Schooner Project of the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum is building a reproduction 1862-class sailing canal boat at Burlington Harbor.

• There are five federal breakwaters on Lake Champlain: Burlington, Plattsburgh, Swanton, and Grand Isle, Vermont and Rouses Point, New York.