Champlain is a very deep, spectacular hundred-mile-long lake that runs north and south between the states of Vermont and New York and reaches into the province of Quebec. In addition to its natural beauty, three treasures are said to be hidden beneath its blue water.
The first is a gift from the bootleggers for whom Lake Champlain was a major thoroughfare during the Prohibition era of the 1920s and ’30s. Filling small boats with Canadian whiskey, the bootleggers would motor down from Quebec through the Inland Sea, or Northeast Arm, section of the lake, past the Champlain Islands. Larger, faster U.S. patrol boats would often lie in wait. The bootleggers would counter by speeding west toward North Hero Island, lightening their boats by tossing the evidence—the liquor—overboard, and escaping to the Carry, a North Hero portage just a few feet wide that divides the Northeast Arm from the Broad, or ...
