One hundred and ninety-one years ago, Irish actor Tyrone Power boarded a steamboat in Whitehall, N.Y., and watched with wonder as it churned north into Lake Champlain.
“I have looked on many lakes, and by none have been more delightfully beguiled,” he wrote in his book Impressions of America During the Years 1833, 1834, and 1835.
Describing the swampy headwaters, “the sweetest bays,” the mountains that rose on either side, and the “tributary streams that rushed sparkling and foaming into its turbid bosom,” he gushed: “Had these beauties been given to England or to Scotland, they would each and all have been berhymed and bepainted until every point of real or imaginable loveliness had been exhausted.”
Poets and artists rhyming and painting along that same route today would find Lake Champlain just as inviting. It retains the same mountain views; long stretches of beauty interrupted only by cottages and a few estates to die for; and very little development, save for one steaming paper plant in New York, until Burlington, where on June 1, 1835, Power’s boat, the Phoenix II, stopped to load and unload passengers.
Driving north from Whitehall to Burlington, glimpses of the lake’s blue surface tease a visitor to come down, touch the water and become beguiled. But where can you do that?
“It’s terrible,” said Chris Sabick, executive director of the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in Vergennes. “Public access to the lake without having a watercraft is practically impossible.”
Neither Vermont nor New York has calculated how much of Lake Champlain’s frontage is public. But for most of its 587 miles of shoreline, the lake’s motto could be “Look but Don’t Touch” — unless you have a boat or money or own lakefront property. More than 100 public beaches and boat launches ring the lake, which seems like a lot until you zoom in on the map. Fact is, the vast majority of lakefront on both sides and into Canada is privately owned.
The lake motto could be “Look but don’t touch.”
Sabick began working at the museum in 1998 as an underwater archeologist. He was in his mid-twenties and didn’t own a boat. “Just trying to find a place where I could fish from the shoreline without getting yelled at by somebody was incredibly difficult,” he recalled. “Everything was private property, or you have to have a vessel to really be able to enjoy the lake, particularly in the South Lake. I find it very frustrating.”
“It’s an equity issue,” said Lori Fisher, who for 30 years directed the Lake Champlain Committee, a nonprofit watchdog and activist group headquartered in Burlington. “When you can walk a shoreline or paddle the lake or fish or swim, that water body becomes personal, and that lived experience is what builds care and responsibility and public support for clean water. Access is not equitably distributed along Lake Champlain.”
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on Lake Champlain, with public access implicit if not explicitly expressed. But the highest priority for the federally supported Lake Champlain Basin Program, created by the U.S. Congress in 1990, has been phosphorous pollution prevention and reduction. That focus has left other problems relatively untouched.
As early as 1988, a study by the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources’ Lakes and Ponds Task Group called lake access sites “insufficient” and recommended, among other things, that “swimming access areas should be acquired” and public access sites “should be more visible.” In 2003 the LCBP’s own blueprint, “Opportunities for Action,” called human access “inadequate.”
Today, growing demand for water recreation is prompting efforts to find stretches of shoreline that can be opened to the public. Until that happens, mirroring Powers’ trip by car reveals that jumping in the lake is often harder than it seems.
From the locks at Whitehall, it is a half-hour drive to Benson Landing, a Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department ramp and dock. It’s free for boat fishing, though technically off-limits to shore fishing because it lacks a fishing platform. It is not a place to swim.
The 40-plus miles between that ramp and the northern edge of Addison County include more than half a dozen public boat access points, but none allows swimming. Along that same stretch are just two town beaches — a rocky beach in Panton and a shallow, sandier one in Ferrisburgh, both free. There’s also a trio of Vermont state parks that charge admission, but of those, only Kingsland Bay in Ferrisburgh offers readily accessible lake swimming. Button Bay, also in Ferrisburgh, has a pool as an alternative to its rocky lakefront, and D.A.R. State Park in Addison advises on its website: “Because the shoreline is steep, swimming, boating, and fishing can be difficult directly from the park.”
Just north lies Lake Champlain’s most exclusive lakefront. Charlotte and Shelburne are two of the wealthiest towns in Vermont, with dozens of miles of shoreline between them — and just two public or semipublic beaches. Charlotte Town Beach charges $5 daily for residents and $10 for nonresidents. Shelburne Town Beach charges $10 per car, which must hold a “Shelburne resident or guest of resident and residents must be present to allow guests to use the facility,” according to its website. From the public boat launch in Shelburne Bay, you can spy South Burlington’s lone public beach, across the bay at Red Rocks Park.
Burlingtonians are justifiably proud of the city’s waterfront and defensive of characterization that access is limited. People who remember the bad old days before 1990, when barbed wire and industrial tanks made the waterfront downright dangerous, see its transformation as a gateway to the lake. Strolling the Waterfront Park boardwalk and watching the sun set over the Adirondacks makes us all feel privileged.
Indeed, from Oakledge Park in the south to Leddy Park in the north, numerous beaches, boat launches and fishing spots are accessible by foot, bike or car. However, you’ll pay to park in most places, and beach access from Waterfront Park is at least a mile’s trek in either direction. Farther north, the lake is rich with access: There are nine Vermont state parks with beaches — three on islands only reachable by boat.
Replicating that kind of access elsewhere on the lake today might only happen with vision, philanthropy, political will and a boatload of money. The good news: The search is on.
This year the Vermont Citizens Advisory Committee on Lake Champlain’s Future, which reports to the governor and legislature, made expansion of “equitable public access and recreation” one of its five priorities. According to its 2026 Lake Champlain Access Plan, the committee “particularly recommends strategies to improve access in the South Lake” — the narrower body below the Champlain Bridge — “and for marginalized and historically disenfranchised communities.”
For Vermont’s immigrant communities, many of which want to fish for their supper, Fish & Wildlife has held programs to explain fishing rules and the dangers of fish caught in polluted waters. Still, according to a focus-group study funded by the Lake Champlain Sea Grant at the University of Vermont, immigrants and refugees say they don’t feel comfortable fishing openly, in part because of ethnic profiling by police. The study is being reviewed for publication by an academic journal.
A major opportunity to improve lake access for immigrants was blocked this year by the Trump administration. When the LCBP awarded $600,000 to a dozen access projects, federal guidance rejected any aimed at diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, according to Basin program director Eric Howe.
Broadening access is a goal at both the Maritime Museum in Ferrisburgh, which began pay-what-you-can admission in 2021, and Burlington’s Community Sailing Center, where the board, prompted by the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement, directed the staff to diversify its mostly white clientele. By adding free lessons, serving lunch and accommodating immigrant needs, director Owen Milne has increased BIPOC participation in its student population from 2 to 25 percent. Sailing center staff now includes BIPOC instructors who began as students five years ago.
As for equity in the South Lake, the issue has bubbled back to life after lying dormant for 17 years. In fall 2009, a group boarded the Carillon, a replica 1920s tour boat, in Whitehall and followed the route taken by Powell in 1835. The idea was to drum up interest in the lake and look at both pollution and potential, said Hilary Solomon, the district manager of the Poultney Mettowee Natural Resources Conservation District.
“We saw the lake from on the water. Most of us hadn’t been on the lake because it’s not accessible down here,” said Solomon, who still remembers taking her children to a nearby marina to swim on a hot day and “being told we had to leave.”
The population in the area is largely working-class: loggers, farmers, slate miners. Using a $5,000 grant from the South Lake Champlain Fund, Solomon is scouting the shoreline for potential access land. A new Vermont state park is one idea, though that project would take years.
“In this part of Vermont, people don’t realize that they even live in the Lake Champlain watershed,” Solomon said. “So people don’t go there. They don’t take their kids there. There aren’t very many places to put in a kayak. It’s difficult to have a picnic along Lake Champlain in the southern part of the lake.”
“Access should not depend on owning a car or a boat,” said Fisher, the former Lake Champlain Committee director. “We need these walkable, bikeable, low-barrier access points. Free or reduced-fee options are really essential to allow people to get to the lake and form those lasting connections that are so fundamental to protecting water quality.” ➆
Boating Options in Burlington Harbor
Buttercup Cruises
One- to 3.5-hour rides aboard a covered “picnic” motorboat.
Champlain Classic Charters
Two-hour rides in a captained motorboat.
Champlain Fleet Club
A club with 25 motorboats for self-operated trips. Initiation fee plus monthly fees.
Community Sailing Center
Sailboats, canoes, kayaks and paddleboards can be rented from this nonprofit.
Kool Vibes
Two- to six-hour cruises aboard a motor yacht with a captain.
Let’s Go Sailing
A two-hour sail on a 30-foot sloop with a captain.
Nauti Paddle
Public or private 90-minute cycleboat cruises on a large, covered pontoon with a captain, crew and motor that does all the work.
Sail Vermont
Private sails for two to four hours on Swan yachts with a captain.
Spirit of Ethan Allen
A large ferry/cruise ship offering cruises, meals, weddings and events.
Swilly’s Charters
A six-hour fishing charter with a captain.
Whistling Man Schooner
Two-hour sails aboard classic sloops with a captain and crew.
Vermont Boat Rental
Rent a motorboat by the hour or full day; self-operated.
Local Knowledge: Hidden Gems on Lake Champlain
At the far south end of Lake Champlain, where the lake is more like a river, so sluggish that a stiff north wind will back the water into a flooding wave called a seiche, a dirt road leads to a small parking area with a sign posted by the Nature Conservancy. There, you can fish or slide a canoe or kayak into the water.
If you google “Buckner Natural Area, ” you might find it. The Nature Conservancy’s southern Vermont office in Poultney has a trail guide and can help direct you from Whitehall, N.Y., across the Poultney River into Vermont. This lake access is a classic example of “local knowledge,” something mariners seek before entering unknown waters.
Around Lake Champlain are dozens of hidden, seldom-visited access gems. Many run across private property and are not on any map, their existence passed by word of mouth among friends. Here are a handful:
The Narrows Wildlife Management Area , northwest of Fair Haven, has a mile of lake frontage. The property was donated by the Spiegel family, then to Vermont Fish & Wildlife. Reached by boat or Cold Springs Road, it has a small parking area and offers shore fishing, plus an immense variety of wetland and forest.
Thompson’s Point in Charlotte isn’t on any public access map, but scuba divers visit regularly, said Jonathan Eddy, co-owner of Burlington’s Waterfront Diving Center. “We do a lot of scuba diving right from shore because there is a public access point with a couple of parking spaces,” he explained. “It’s leased by private landowners down to the high-water mark.” Follow Thompsons Point Road past tennis courts, turn right on North Shore Road, and, as it curves back past the courts, there’s a small dirt parking lot on the right. The path to the lake is across the road to the north.
Outside Shoreham, a private farm has more than a mile of frontage in an area known as Stony Cove. There is public access to the rocky beach area, located where Lake Street parallels the shore. It is one of 40 sites around the lake in the Lake Champlain Committee Paddlers’ Trail. This beach may be underwater for portions of the year. The farm is off-limits.
Find Mayes Landing and Derway Cove right off the Colchester Causeway before the bike path bridge. The landing, on the shores of the river, can be fished and used to launch kayaks. The water is often full of trees and limbs washed down in heavy rain. The Trust for Public Land gathered several nonprofits, including Local Motion and the Lake Champlain Land Trust, to buy the land. The Winooski Valley Park District manages it.
The Rossetti Beach Natural Area in Colchester is a rare free 1,280-foot sandy beach tucked on 47 acres behind the Malletts Bay United Church of Christ, on the road to Airport Park. Once slated for 44 waterfront homes, the Lake Champlain Land Trust purchased and protected it.
Round Pond in South Hero is a quiet little spot as you enter the Champlain Islands, either driving on Route 2 or biking on the Colchester Causeway. Comprising farmland, woods, wetland and 1,075 feet of lake shoreline, Round Pond was purchased by several conservation organizations. The beach is shale, but the views of the Green Mountains are spectacular.
Butternut Hill Natural Area in North Hero has an undeveloped 1,100-foot shoreline and two shale beaches reached by a mile-long trail. It is maintained by the Nature Conservancy and Lake Champlain Land Trust and is free to walk, picnic or swim.
For more hidden gems, the Lake Champlain Committee has compiled lists with links of public access “opportunities” for state parks, public beaches, boat launches and wildlife management areas. The Lake Champlain Land Trust has conserved just over 20 miles of Lake Champlain shoreline, executive director Chris Boget said. He recommends Green Goat Maps for finding spots in the Burlington area. They’re available at Outdoor Gear Exchange on Church Street.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Shore Enough? | Lake Champlain’s waters are out of reach for many”
This article appears in Summer Preview • 2026.
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