History, Natural History & the Arts
The Champlain Canal turns 200 this year and the Erie Canal will celebrate its 200th anniversary in 2025.
The Champlain Canal between the Hudson River and Lake Champlain at Whitehall was the first to open. Worked started on the Champlain Canal in October, 1816. The first boats operated in November, 1819, and was fully completed in 1823, two years before the Erie Canal was finished. [Read more…] about New York State Canals Bicentennial: Some History & Plans For Celebrations
The Clinton County Historical Association has been awarded a 2023 Local Heritage Grant from the Champlain Valley National Heritage Partnership totaling $8,000 to plan for the America250 commemoration of our nation’s founding. [Read more…] about Clinton County Historians Planning For America250
The Lake Champlain Fish and Wildlife Management Cooperative – a working group of fisheries professionals from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – have announced the decision to further reduce the number of stocked lake trout released annually into Lake Champlain waters. They said this decision was prompted by the continued increase in natural reproduction and the documentation of multiple age classes of wild fish. [Read more…] about As Lake Champlain Lake Trout Rebound, Stocking Reduced
The new book From the Battlefield to the Stage: The Many Lives of General John Burgoyne (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023) by Norman S. Poser provides a rounded biography, covering not only the Saratoga campaign but also elements of General John Burgoyne’s eventful life that have never been adequately explored. [Read more…] about Battlefield to Stage: The Lives of John Burgoyne
On March 4th, the State of Vermont celebrated its 232nd birthday. March 4th, 1791 is the formal start of what we now know of as Vermont: the 14th state in the union, with a continuity that has withstood the last two centuries. But the idea of Vermont had its own torturous birth in 1777, the result of land grants from the colonies of New Hampshire and New York, and those settlers making those lands their own. [Read more…] about The Anniversary of the State of Vermont
In the midst of winter, the ice-covered lakes of the Northeast seem quiet. It may, however, be a bit noisy below the ice. Winter into early spring is the spawning season for burbot, when males produce sounds to attract mates. [Read more…] about Burbot: New York’s Misunderstood Cod Cousin
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has announced the release of the draft Watershed Implementation Plan that creates a detailed path forward to reduce phosphorus that impairs Lake Champlain and contributes to harmful algal blooms (HABs). [Read more…] about Comments Sought on Lake Champlain Watershed Plan
The 43rd Annual Islands Ice Fishing Derby on Lake Champlain was cancelled Saturday morning, February 11th, following warm weather that led to dangerously thin ice resulting in the deaths of three anglers.
Just as the derby was kicking off, the Grand Isle County Sheriff’s Department issued a request that it be cancelled immediately due to poor ice conditions. “All ice anglers are asked to get off the ice,” event organizers posted to Facebook at 8 am. [Read more…] about Three Ice Fishermen Die After Falling Through Champlain Ice
Dennis Warren left his job as a coal shoveler on the New York Central Railroad in Albany to ship out to the First World War. His transport ship had a close call with a German submarine on the way over, but got there in time to take part in what one of the bloodiest military campaigns in American history.
For Americans after the war, the Argonne would mean what Normandy meant just 25 years later – sacrifice. Sadly, that sacrifice in the Argonne Forest was never repaid to Dennis Warren, who met the death of a smuggler – running from an officious and invasive law on a treacherous mountain road near Port Henry on Lake Champlain.
According to the newsman who reported his death at the age of 29, “Canadian Ale was spread across the road.” [Read more…] about Smugglers & The Law: Prohibition In Northern New York
Since it opened to traffic on April 11, 1960, millions of vehicles traveling the I-87 Northway have passed over the Mohawk River on what they think are called on “The Twin Bridges.” That bridge however, is really named for a Polish-American hero of the American Revolution – Taddeus Kosciusko. [Read more…] about Taddeus Kosciusko: A Hero of Two Worlds (& The Name On That Bridge)