News

CVNHP Partners Cope with the COVID-19

The COVID-19 Pandemic has cancelled, limited, and altered plans for outreach and interpretation at venues across the CVNHP. The 116 museums, historic sites, and nature centers within the region are operating at various levels of access to the public in 2020.

Adirondack Experience: The Museum on Blue Mountain Lake, the Clinton County Historical Association & Museum, and the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum are closed this year. Other large, marquee heritage sites, including ECHO, Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, Shelburne Museum, the Mont-Saint-Hilaire/Gault Nature Reserve, Fort Ticonderoga, and Vermont and New York state historic sites are open with COVID-related limitations. Check with each location for details when planning your visit.

Federal cultural and natural heritage sites continue to try to serve the public in these uncertain times. The Saratoga National Historical Park, Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park, and the Missisquoi National Wildlife Refuge visitor facilities are closed, but their grounds and trails remain open to the public. In Canada, Fort Chambly National Historic Site (NHS) is open to visitors with some COVID-related health provisions. Fort Lennox NHS is closed due to renovations (unrelated to COVID-19). The tow path along the Chambly Canal NHS is open to recreation, but the canal and mooring areas remain closed.  

Many museums responded to the closures and delays with a wide array of online interpretive presentations: 

• The Adirondack Experience: The Museum on Blue Mountain Lake offers online activities and has a searchable database of 70,000 objects and ephemera. 
• The American Museum of Fly Fishing offers virtual exhibitions. 
• The Bennington Museum offers virtual presentations of galleries and objects. 
• The ECHO, Leahy Center for Lake Champlain offers ECHO-at-Home Learning and other online activities. 
• The Fleming Museum at the University of Vermont offers Fleming From Home and a searchable collection.  

• Fort Ticonderoga offers online interpretation via the Center for Digital History and has live, online events.  
• The Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History in Middlebury has virtual tours and a searchable archive.  
• The Lake Champlain Maritime Museum hosts a Digital Museum that includes exhibits, 360° Panoramas, and virtual shipwreck tours.  
• The Middlebury College Museum of Art is offering 3-D tours, including the Votes…for Women? suffrage exhibit.  
• The Rokeby Museums offers a virtual tour of the Free & Safe: The Underground Railroad in Vermont exhibit. 
• The Rutland Historical Society has online exhibits, galleries, and a searchable collection.  
• The Saratoga Springs History Museum offers video of museum programs and tours of Saratoga Springs.
• The Shelburne Museum, offers an array of activities on their Museum from Home program, which includes weblogs, art challenges, video tours, and Spotify playlists inspired by the collections. 

If you want to get outside, most regional recreation trails, including the Burlington Bike Path and the Adirondack Rail Trail remain open and very popular. Most Adirondack Park, Green Mountain National Forest, and state park/forests lands and campgrounds are open with social distancing protocols in place. The facilities on the region’s national scenic trails: Appalachian Trail, Long Trail, North Country Trail, and Northville-Lake Placid Trail are also open for use with COVID-related guidelines.