About 300 years ago, Otter Creek was pristine wilderness, with fish, herons, ducks and other waterfowl, deer and moose along the river’s edge, beavers shaping the banks, and river otters so plentiful that Native Peoples called it Wanakake-took, Otter River. The river flows 102 miles from its source near Dorset in Bennington County to Lake Champlain, and Iroquoian and Algonquian Native Peoples traveled on it and lived in its fertile valley for nearly 8000 years, fishing, hunting, gathering edible plants, making clothing and shelter from pelts and skins, forming clay into pots and utensils, crafting tools, bows and arrows, and baskets from native woods, and using chert for projectile points and tools. In the mid-1600s, French trappers and fur traders came to Lake Champlain seeking beaver pelts for fashionable men’s hats in Europe. Much of northwestern Vermont, including Vergennes, remained part of New France until after the French and Indian War from 1754 to 1763. Colonists began settling along Otter Creek near the falls in the 1760s after French forces were defeated in the Champlain Valley, with some holding New Hampshire grants and others claiming New York charters, and these disputes helped bring conflict to western Vermont, where Ethan Allen built a blockhouse nearby in the mid-1770s to protect the New Hampshire grants. Vermont remained an independent republic from 1777 to 1791 in part because of these conflicts.