St. Croix Island, Maine

In the middle of the channel of the St. Croix River is St. Croix Island, where French colonialists, including the explorer Samuel Champlain, landed and wintered in 1604. This was the earliest European settlement in what is now the USA, north of Florida (where the village of St. Augustine was founded by the Spanish in 1565). Champlain went on to establish Quebec in 1608, and is considered one of the founders of what would become Canada. Since this was where he first arrived in the new world, many think of it as the “birthplace of Canada” even though now it is in the United States, by a few hundred feet. The settlement built there was burned down by English raiders on their way to Nova Scotia, in 1613. The seven-acre island became a US National Monument in 1949, and is administered by the US National Park Service. Though there are public interpretive facilities on shore, the island itself remains off-limits to the public, to protect the historic remains buried there and eroding into the river.