Ongoing Exhibits
You can try it on!
Lake Champlain: A Porthole to History
Lake Champlain has the nation’s best preserved and best documented collection of shipwrecks; over 200 of them have been counted in LCMM’s sonar survey of the lake. In this exhibit, nautical archaeologists decipher the stories of some of the most unusual and dramatic shipwrecks in the lake: a horse-powered ferry; Vermont I, the world’s second successful experiment in steam navigation; the tragic fire that sank the steamboat Phoenix in 1819; and the heroic rescue when the 1862 canal schooner General Butler ran aground on the Burlington Breakwater in a winter storm.
These exhibits contain artifacts recovered from the shipwrecks, as well as information about our changing diving technology. Even visit our "Virtual Diver", and navigate around the shipwrecks yourself!
The Key to Liberty: The Revolutionary War in the Champlain Valley
Visitors enjoy hands-on learning activities.
Visit the exhibit Key to Liberty to read eyewitness accounts of the 1776 Battle of Valcour Island, and learn the fate of the fleet that dared to confront the British Royal Navy on Lake Champlain.
Entering the gallery, visitors find a 9 ft.-long scale model of a gunboat from the 1776 fleet on Lake Champlain. Ship models, interactive learning stations, videos, artifacts, and historical maps and images tell the story of Benedict Arnold’s 1776 naval fleet on Lake Champlain, and the fate of the historic shipwrecks of that fleet including the last surviving gunboat discovered in 1997.
A 15-minute video "Key to Liberty," based on eyewitness accounts, brings to life the crucial moments of the Battle of Valcour Island. Another video documentary “A Tale of Three Gunboats” presents the raising of the 1776 gunboat Philadelphia from Lake Champlain in 1935, the construction and launching of the replica gunboat Philadelphia II in 1989–1991, and the 1997 discovery of the last missing gunboat Spitfire from Benedict Arnold’s fleet.
Life Aboard A Canal Boat
On Display All Season
For 150 years, canal boats transformed communities, commerce, and culture in the northeastern United States, until they were supplanted by railroads, trucking, and airplanes. Maritime archaeology fieldwork and research, and the construction and operation of replica canal schooner Lois McClure have allowed LCMM to recapture many details of life in the canal era (ca. 1820-1940). Enjoy a “virtual tour” of schooner Lois McClure, and the latest archaeological findings from historic shipwrecks. Some three hundred artifacts recovered from the Sloop Island Canal Boat in 2002-03 provide a glimpse of daily life on board a canal boat. Peer through a window into the past, through the remarkably complete contents of the cabin where family and crew lived.
Bridging Lake Champlain: Where Have all the Ferries Gone?
Early 20th century photo of the Champlain Bridge.
When the Champlain Bridge opened on August 26, 1929, over 40,000 people gathered to celebrate the dawn of a new era for the region—and created the Champlain Valley’s first traffic jam! For centuries, the lake had served as a highway for north-south travel and a link between communities on the eastern and western shores. But in the early twentieth century, people traveling by car and train saw the lake as a 120-mile long barrier, and wanted a bridge they could cross in any weather and at any time.
The bridge meant the end of a long tradition of ferries across the lake, and changes in the towns that had flourished at the ferry landings. In the early 1920s, eight ferries operated within a twenty-mile radius of the Chimney Point—Crown Point bridge site. Just two still operate today.
The exhibition uses rare archival film, artifacts and historic photographs to revisit this momentous change in the Champlain Valley, including original film footage of the opening day parade, signal lights from the bridge, and treasured photographs and memorabilia from family members and regional archives.
Replica 1776 Gunboat Philadelphia II
Climb aboard the 54 ft. long Philadelphia II, a full-sized replica of a gunboat from the American fleet that confronted the British Royal Navy on Lake Champlain in 1776. The original Philadelphia, which sank on the first day of the Battle of Valcour Island, was raised from the lake in 1935 and is now at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C. The replica, constructed by LCMM staff and volunteers between 1989–91, is usually moored at the museum’s North Harbor, offering visitors a hands-on encounter with the eighteenth century maritime experience.
Schooner Lois McClure
In 2008, LCMM’s 1862-class Lake Champlain Canal Schooner Lois McClure travels to Quebec City, the Richelieu corridor, and other ports-of-call representing Vermont at the 400th anniversary of Champlain’s settlement of Quebec City. We will share the rich communal history of Vermont, New York, and Quebec, telling and gathering stories that weave us all together. From May 5 to June 15, before departure for this year’s tour, and upon return in September and October, the schooner will be at the museum waterfront and open to museum visitors. Read more about this “Our Shared Heritage" Tour.
Steamboat Preservation
The year after Robert Fulton operated the world’s first successful steamboat on the Hudson River, the Winans brothers launched the first steamboat on Lake Champlain, Vermont. The lake’s 29 large steamboats ferries and launches served the lake’s waterfront communities and captured the public imagination. Other exhibits in this building feature the lighthouses of Lake Champlain, the 1929 Champlain Bridge, and powerboats, including a fully-restored 1954 Chris Craft Runabout.
Small Watercraft Collection & Boat Building in the Champlain Valley
Enjoy LCMM’s collection of over seventy-five historic watercraft built or used on Lake Champlain. Permanent and rotating exhibits interpret a wide variety of boats, including dugouts, a 1609-era birchbark canoe replica (along with other historic canoes whose designs share the cultural origins of this elegant prototype), rowing craft, and examples of the many types of small sailing vessels that once gracefully plied the waters of the Lake.