North Country (New York) North Country (New York) The North Country is a region of the U.S. state of New York that encompasses the state's extreme northern frontier, bordering Lake Ontario on the west, the Saint Lawrence River and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec on the north and northwest, and Lake Champlain and Vermont on the east. Generally speaking, the North Country is understood to be that portion of northern New York which lies outside the Adirondack Park and consists of mostly level lands or the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains, but is not within the Adirondack range itself. New York's North
Lake Champlain 'door of the country' or 'lake to the country'. The lake is an important eastern gateway to Iroquois Confederacy lands. The lake was named after the French explorer Samuel de Champlain, who encountered it in July 1609. While the ports of Burlington, Vermont, Port Henry, New York, and Plattsburgh, New York today are primarily used by small craft, ferries, and lake cruise ships, they were of substantial commercial and military importance in the 18th and 19th centuries. New France allocated concessions all along lake Champlain to French settlers and built forts to defend the waterways. In colonial times, Lake Champlain