Lakes to Locks Passage links Lake Champlain and Lake George with the Champlain Canal and Hudson River to the south and the Chambly Canal with the Richelieu and St. Lawrence Rivers of Quebec to the north, tracing a landscape shaped by natural forces, Native peoples, conflict, settlement, commerce, and tourism. As Europeans entered these valleys, the interconnected waterway became a major route of exploration and empire: in 1609 Henry Hudson traveled north on the Hudson River for the Dutch, while Samuel de Champlain traveled south from Quebec for France, and Champlain’s clash alongside Huron and Montaignais guides against Iroquois fighters helped begin two centuries of conflict. After the Dutch ceded their territory to the British, who renamed it New York, forts, traders, and settlers spread northward along the Upper Hudson River, Lake George, and Lake Champlain, leaving Dutch, French, and English influences still visible in local communities. The waterway became a battleground in the French and Indian War beginning with the Battle of Lake George in 1755, then in the American Revolution when the American victory at Saratoga became known to many historians as the turning point of the war, and again in the War of 1812 when the American victory in Plattsburgh Bay on September 11, 1814, helped lead to the treaty establishing the boundary between the United States and Canada and to two hundred years of peace and prosperity between the two countries. Military sites along this strategic corridor remained important into the late 20th century, and after Plattsburgh Air Force Base closed in 1995, the base took on new life through museums and recreation areas. The route also includes the Road to the Battle of Bennington through North Hoosick, where the early settlement of Sancoick stood on Little White Creek near the Hoosic and Walloomsac Rivers; founded under the Walloomsac Patent in 1739, destroyed in 1746 during an attack linked to Fort Massachusetts, and resettled by 1777 as waterpower supported small mills. In August 1777, as British General John Burgoyne sought control of the Lake Champlain–Hudson River waterway to sever New England from the rest of the continent, supply shortages led him to send German Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich Baum from Fort Miller toward Bennington in search of horses, supplies, and reinforcements. American General John Stark responded by sending Colonel William Gregg and a small militia force to scout, and after Gregg met Baum’s troops, fired one volley, and withdrew to report their position, the dismantling of a bridge surface delayed Baum’s pursuit for about an hour before the larger clash at Bennington.