A Brief History of Paddling on Lake Champlain

For most of human history in the Lake Champlain region, paddling was a way of life, not just a means of recreation. According to “Lake Champlain’s First Navigators,” a publication by the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum and Dr. Fred Wiseman that outlines the development of watercraft prior to European contact, Indigenous people inhabited this area as far back as the time of the Champlain Sea, over 11,000 years ago. The terrain was vastly different, with whales swimming in the wide saltwater of the Champlain Sea. Megafauna including mastodons, woolly mammoths, and herds of caribou roamed the landscape, which lacked large trees and resembled arctic tundra. Semi-nomadic Indigenous people moved seasonally to hunt during this Paleoindian Period (11,300-9000 years ago). Without trees, their boats would have been made of the hides and bones of large sea or land animals. As we paddle on Lake Champlain in 2025, it is awe-inspiring to imagine mariners in skin boats navigating the Champlain Sea so long ago. 

The Champlain Sea receded about 10,000 years ago and gave way to a smaller freshwater lake. As the climate warmed and the tundra evolved into forests, megafauna retreated north or went extinct. With fewer large animals and more substantial trees, people of the early and middle Archaic period, between 6,000 and 9,000 years ago, traded skin boats for dugout canoes. Dugouts were built with fire and stone tools from the newly available massive pines—a single trunk would comprise a single craft. As the lake and its watershed began to resemble today’s maps, a network of interconnected freshwater waterways became both highway and supermarket, and paddling was the best way to travel and go fishing. 

Temperatures dropped slightly as the Archaic period gave way to the Woodland period, which began about 3,000 years ago and lasted until European contact in the 1600s. Forest communities changed, technology advanced, and people replaced the heavy dugout canoes with fast, lightweight canoes of bark skins. It could take a family a week to build one 16-foot canoe, most often of birch bark. Their lightweight design made for easier portage and long-distance travel, which created trading opportunities with groups all over the waterways of the northeast. Even after Europeans introduced their own boat styles, the quicker, lighter birch bark canoes proved more effective and continued to dominate lake travel for many years. When industrialization took hold in the Champlain valley, with large steam-powered ships chugging across the lake packed with lumber and masses of people, there was still a place for the humble canoe on the quiet bays and meandering rivers. 

Today, kayaking, paddleboarding, and canoeing are among the most popular ways to get out on Lake Champlain. While wooden canoes and kayaks are still crafted and cherished, most modern boats are made of fiberglass, aluminum, plastic, or lightweight composite materials. Plastics are, however, a double-edged sword: pervasive in modern life and yet incapable of breaking down safely in our environment. These materials do make it easy to mass-produce watercraft—you can walk into any outdoor gear store and see walls lined with brightly colored vessels and adjustable paddles, a change from the effort it takes to produce vessels of skin, wood, or bark.  

In 1996 the Lake Champlain Committee (LCC) established the Lake Champlain Paddler’s Trail to create a safe and accessible recreational corridor for human-powered craft on the lake. The Trail began with just six public launch sites. Today, it includes over 40 public and private locations—some for day use only—that collectively provide access to more than 600 campsites on both public and private lands. LCC publishes an online Lake Champlain Paddlers’ Trail Guidebook annually, with detailed information on each site along the route, safety guidance, and a comprehensive interactive trail map. LCC members receive full access to the Guidebook. You can become a member here.  

As it grows, the Trail remains a living legacy—a way to experience the lake’s quiet coves, open water, and wild places with mindfulness and care. Its success relies on paddlers who respect the lake and a community that believes in the power of shared access and shared responsibility. “[A] great paddling experience depends on clean water, and we wanted that value reflected in every aspect of the Trail. You can’t separate access from stewardship or safety from clean water—they’re all part of the same current,” says former LCC Executive Director Lori Fisher, who was instrumental in founding the Paddlers’ Trail. 

As long as people have lived on the shores of Lake Champlain and the Champlain Sea, there have been paddlers, steering an ever-evolving lineage of small boats. Continue the ongoing story of human-powered travel on our lake and explore the Lake Champlain Paddler’s Trail—whether for a week, a day, or just a few hours! 

Information on the early history of Indigenous peoples’ navigation of Lake Champlain was provided by “Lake Champlain’s First Navigators,” a publication by the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum and Dr. Fred Wiseman.