Look out at the zig-zag stone line that shelters Burlington's harbor from Lake Champlain. Built in stages between 1836 and 1890, this is a rare 19th‑century timber‑cribbed stone breakwater, and it was recognized on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003. The structure you see stretches in a zig‑zag of seven legs, a main run 3,793 feet long with a separate 364‑foot section to the north, the two parts set off by a 200‑foot channel.
Its visible faces are clothed in a variety of stone materials, but beneath the water the story is timber: cribs laid mostly on a rubble foundation and filled with rubblestone. Those cribs are hemlock at the lower levels and white pine above, a careful layering that helped builders of the era resist wind, waves, and ice. You’re near the center of Burlington Bay, the sweep of water that reaches from Appletree Point to Shelburne Point, and the breakwater here roughly follows the shoreline’s contour.
Seven stone legs zig-zag out across the water, and under every one of them hemlock and white pine cribs still hold the line against wind, waves, and ice.