[Steamer Vermont, Lake Champlain, N.Y.]

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The steamer *Vermont* was a side-wheeler, a paddle-driven vessel whose wheels turned on both flanks, and this glass-plate view shows her on Lake Champlain, the long waterway between New York and Vermont that carried passengers and freight for much of the nineteenth century. Photographers working for the Detroit Publishing Company, which sold views of American scenery and towns in the early 1900s, often captured such steamers as symbols of leisure travel. The negative is inscribed "1860," a date that does not match its estimated range of about 1900 to 1910, so the inscription may refer to the boat's build year or to an earlier record. The sharp detail of the hull and wheelhouse makes it useful for studying the design of lake steamers of that era.

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