Lake Champlain, stretching one hundred twenty miles from Skenesborough in New York north to the Province of Quebec, was for nearly ten thousand years a major travel route and resource for the region’s original inhabitants, who knew it as Caniaderi-Guarunte, “The Door to the Country,” and Bitawbagok, “The Waters that Lie Between.” Its north-south course and natural barriers at Fort Ann and the Chambly Rapids gave it enormous strategic value, leading Native Americans to contest its hunting grounds and drawing European powers into struggle after Samuel de Champlain’s travels in 1609; France and Great Britain fought over the lake and its resources in four wars from the 1680s through 1763. During the American Revolution, Americans led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold captured Fort Ticonderoga on May 10, 1775, temporarily removing the British from the lake, and after the failed American invasion of Canada, the retreating Northern Department fell back in July 1776 to Crown Point and then to a strong position opposite Ticonderoga, where fewer than 3,000 soldiers from several states began fortifying the rugged ground. At the same time Benedict Arnold directed a shipbuilding program at Skenesborough, and between June and September twelve vessels were launched and fitted out at Ticonderoga to meet the British fleet at the Battle of Valcour on October 11. Because Lake Champlain was self-contained, large warships had to be built on its waters, and the vessels used there during the Revolution included bateaux, canoes, gondolas or gunboats, radeaux, row galleys, schooners, ships, and sloops.