Lake Champlain level. Lake Champlain is in the Lake Champlain Valley between the Green Mountains of Vermont and the Adirondack Mountains of New York, drained northward by the -long Richelieu River into the St. Lawrence River at Sorel-Tracy, Quebec, northeast and downstream of Montreal, Quebec. It also receives the waters from the -long Lake George, so its basin collects waters from the northwestern slopes of the Green Mountains and the northernmost eastern peaks of the Adirondack Mountains. Lake Champlain drains nearly half of Vermont, and approximately 250,000 people get their drinking water from the lake. The lake is fed in Vermont by
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