The Burlington Waterfront
Douglas Porter

 
In the fall of 1806, Timothy Dwight, the president of Yale College, traveled to the new state of Vermont. Burlington, a town of about one thousand residents, was a day's ride north of Vergennes. The trip took Dwight through Ferrisburg, Charlotte, and Shelburne, which were at the time "mere collections of farms". Burlington bordered a "noble bay" on Lake Champlain and Dwight found the town "uncommonly beautiful". There were two streets rising from the bay to the top of the summit where a new college was located. These two streets were intersected at right angles by a series of cross streets and there were about 150 buildings scattered over the grid.1

When Dwight arrived, Burlington was already a port of entry. And while Dwight noted the rough-and-tumble character of the town and was less than favorably impressed with the morals of its inhabitants,2 he expressed respect for the commerce developing along the waterfront. Eleven years prior to Dwight's visit Burlington was little more than a handful of houses. But by 1806, the town was at the center of a trade network with Boston, New York, Troy, Montreal, and Quebec, and people were getting rich. Four years later, Burlington had over 1600 residents and the first pier had been built at the end of Maple Street for the schooners that sailed the lake. Champlain Canal was opened in 1823, connecting the lake to the Hudson River, and in 1826 a lighthouse was built on Juniper Island to facilitate traffic in Burlington Bay. Shipping on the lake and canal opened new markets for the farms and manufactories of northern Vermont, and Burlington became the major outlet of the region.

1 T. Dwight, Travels in New England and New York (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1969), 295. The buildings were grouped into four major clusters, one of these along the waterfront.

2 Dwight, Travels in New England and New York, 402-3. According to Dwight, Burlington did not have a church at the time of his visit and he found the morals of Burlington residents "uncommonly loose". He was outraged at a sight he "never saw elsewhere in New England a large collection of people assembled on the Sabbath at an inn for the purpose of drinking."