A Henry Sheldon Musuem Exhibit
Mapping Champlain’s New World

Samuel de Champlain was not only known as the founder of New France, he was also a skilled cartographer.

In recognition of the Champlain Quadricentennial, this exhibit features a stunning private collection of maps chronicling the evolution of the Lake Champlain region, Vermont and the United States from 1640 to 1911.

Visitors will see how successive layers of land acquisition and use were made manifest as mapmakers depicted European conquest and settlement. Maps express the cultural, economic and political ideals of their makers and of the audiences for which they were made. The exhibit will encourage the public to think critically about the meanings of the maps they see every day.