That time there briefly was a 6th Great Lake

DETROIT – We all know the acronym HOMES, right? Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior -- all five Great Lakes. Heck, it’s where the Ann Arbor brewery gets its name.

The Great Lakes are the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth by area and the second largest by volume. They are larger than most inland seas and are treated as such by the U.S. Geological Survey due to how they behave that way.

Did you know that there was a period when there was a sixth Great Lake (legally)?

It’s kind of like when people tried creating a fifth Ninja Turtle that just happened to be around and was hidden for some reason.

Lake Champlain: The Jennika of the Great Lakes

Lake Champlain sits between New York, Vermont and Montreal. You could fit roughly 20 Lake Champlains inside of Lake Erie. By surface area, it’s about the same size as Lake St. Clair.

While it connects to the St. Lawrence Seaway, Lake Champlain is not officially a part of the Great Lakes, but it was, briefly.

For that, you can blame Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy. In 1998, Congress extended a national program that funded the conservation of coastal and Great Lakes regions.

Leahy, who was also the guy in The Dark Knight who told the Joker, “We’re not intimidated by thugs,” during the party scene (this is not a joke), changed the reauthorization to define Lake Champlain as one of the Great Lakes (also not a joke). This change authorized Vermont and New York access to millions of dollars reserved for states that border the Great Lakes or oceans.

It was signed into law on March 6, 1998.

People were not thrilled. Midwestern pride is a powerful thing, and within three weeks, Lake Champlain’s legal status as a Great Lake was revoked. However, access to the funds to protect and research the lake was maintained.

The Lake Champlain Sea Grant remains funded through the federal program that briefly let it be one of the Great Lakes.

Leahy was the third-longest serving U.S. Senator in history, working as a public servant for nearly 50 years, who -- once again, I cannot stress this enough -- had a speaking role in 2008’s The Dark Knight.

The Vermont lawmaker was succeeded by Sen. Peter Welch in 2023.