Chittenden County

The county in brief

A traveler's read on Chittenden County

Vermont is the only US state that has never had a Walmart Supercenter inside its capital city limits — Montpelier proper holds out, but Chittenden County 40 miles north hosts the only three Walmart locations in the entire state (Williston, St. Albans, and Berlin), a retail-concentration anomaly that turns the I-89 / US-2 corridor through South Burlington into Vermont's de facto big-box and chain-grocery hub for any RV traveler resupplying between the White Mountains and the Adirondacks. Chittenden County's 539 sq mi — the smallest county by area in Vermont — wrap Lake Champlain's eastern shore from South Hero (the southernmost Champlain Island, accessible via a 7-mile causeway from Milton to Grand Isle on US-2) south to Charlotte and the Shelburne ferry landing. Burlington (population 44,743, the county seat and Vermont's largest city) operates the smallest US metropolitan statistical area's largest city to run a public-sector district energy system: the downtown steam loop is heated by the 50-MW McNeil Generating Station, a wood-chip-fueled biomass cogeneration plant commissioned in 1984 that supplies roughly half of the city's annual electricity demand from sustainably-harvested Vermont forest residue per Burlington Electric Department fuel-source reporting.

The University of Vermont and Champlain College both sit on the Burlington bluff overlooking the lake. Burlington International Airport (BTV) is the only commercial international airport in Vermont. The Lake Champlain Transportation Company ferry across to Port Kent NY runs the canonical RV-friendly crossing into the Adirondack High Peaks region — the seasonal route (mid-June through mid-October per the operator's published schedule) accepts RVs up to 40 ft length and 12,500 GVWR with advance reservation strongly recommended for summer weekends, and is the only car-ferry crossing of the lake's middle waist. Burlington Municipal Code §20-58 prohibits overnight RV street parking citywide; Lake Champlain Islands towns enforce no-overnight ordinances at most public waterfront. North Beach Campground (Burlington Parks and Recreation, May-Oct season) accepts rigs to 45 ft with electric hookups across 137 sites — the only municipal RV-friendly base inside city limits and the closest waterfront base to downtown.