Lake Champlain, Church Street Marketplace and New England's most progressive small city on the Vermont shore
Burlington faces Lake Champlain from Vermont's north shore — the state's largest city at 45,000 people, home to the University of Vermont (chartered 1791) and one of the most concentrated craft-beer scenes per capita in the United States. Church Street Marketplace is the walkable downtown spine; the Shelburne Museum (37 historic structures on 45 acres, 15 minutes south) is one of the great folk-art collections in America; and Ben & Jerry's factory in nearby Waterbury is Vermont's most visited paid attraction. The ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain adds world-class science education to a cit…
Burlington's Lake Champlain position made it a strategic prize in the French and Indian War and the American Revolution — the city was the staging ground for two major invasions north. By the 1830s it was Vermont's main port, with steamboats carrying marble and timber south to New York. The city elected Bernie Sanders mayor in 1981, beginning the most unusual political career in modern American history, and in 2014 became the first US city to run entirely on renewable electricity — milestones that define Burlington's outsized role in the national conversation about urban progressivism.