Isle La Motte Monument
Isle La Motte, Grand Isle County, Vermont
Marker Inscription
This is Isle La Motte, "the island three leagues long" where Samuel de Champlain says he landed and hunted and camped July 2nd and 3rd 1609. It was settled in 1665 by the French who built fort "St. Ann" on the West shore where now is a "Shrive of S. Ann".
The Story
Isle La Motte, the northernmost island in Lake Champlain, entered the written record in 1609 when Samuel de Champlain reported landing, hunting, and camping here in early July. In 1665 French colonists built Fort St. Anne on the island's west shore — the first European settlement in what became Vermont — later commemorated by the shrine of St. Anne on the same ground. The marker links the moment of French exploration to the fortified foothold that followed.
Why it matters
This small Lake Champlain island holds the deepest layer of Vermont's colonial past, marking where French exploration first hardened into settlement on New England's inland frontier.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Isle La Motte is the northernmost island in Lake Champlain, a long finger of water reaching up toward what is now the Canadian border. In the early seventeenth century this was the deep frontier of European exploration in the Northeast — a contested inland waterway between the domains of France to the north and the Native peoples and, later, English colonies to the south.
When this story begins, in 1609, there was no Vermont, no United States — only a vast, little-charted interior that a French explorer was among the first Europeans to describe. Two generations later, in 1665, France was actively pressing its reach southward down the lake, planting fortified outposts to hold the route.
That span — from a single exploring voyage to a permanent fortified settlement — is exactly the arc the marker traces on this small island.
People & events
The marker opens with Samuel de Champlain, the French explorer who, by his own account, landed on this 'island three leagues long' and hunted and camped here on the 2nd and 3rd of July, 1609. That report is the island's entry into the written record — the moment it stepped out of prehistory and onto the page.
More than half a century later, in 1665, French colonists returned in earnest and built Fort St. Anne on the island's west shore. Where that fort once stood, the marker notes, there is now a shrine of St. Anne — sacred ground layered directly over the site of the old stronghold.
So two moments anchor the story: the explorer's fleeting July camp, and the settlers' fortified foothold that followed. The marker deliberately links them, showing how a place first glimpsed by an explorer became, in time, a garrisoned outpost and then a place of devotion.
Its place in the American story
This little island holds the deepest layer of Vermont's colonial past. The fort raised here in 1665 is remembered as the first European settlement in what would become Vermont — the point where French exploration hardened into an actual, occupied place on New England's inland frontier.
Lake Champlain itself was one of the great strategic corridors of early America, a natural highway between the French north and the English colonies south. A fortified island near its northern end sat squarely on that contested line, part of the long imperial contest that shaped the entire region.
By joining the explorer's landing to the settlers' fort and the later shrine, the marker compresses the whole early European story of the Champlain valley — exploration, fortification, faith — into a single, memorable spot.
If you visit
Come for the sense of deep time. This is one of those places where the written history of an entire state begins, and standing on the island lets you feel how remote and consequential this frontier once was. Look toward the west shore, where the marker places the old fort and the shrine that now occupies the ground.
Let the lake itself be part of the visit. Champlain's waters were the highway that brought both the explorer and the soldiers here, and taking in that long northern reach helps you understand why this obscure island mattered.
It's a serene, contemplative stop on any tour of the Lake Champlain islands — a chance to stand at the very first chapter of the region's colonial story. Read the marker, take in the shoreline, and let the quiet do the rest.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Samuel de Champlain
Related events
- · Construction of Fort St. Anne (1665)
Themes & tags
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