Rock Dunder - in Lake Champlain, Vermont - Places of Geologic Significance on Waymarking.com

A solitary rock extending just above the waters of Lake Champlain: the water level averages 95.5' ASL, and the rock protrudes only a few feet above that (that's a seagull standing there on the left side). The island becomes somewhat larger at low water.

Dunder and much larger nearby Juniper Island (visible in the photo in the distance, to the left) are remnants of a large belt of Utica slate which once filled Lake Champlain from Shelburne to South Hero, part of a belt extending northward from the Hudson River. The base of the rock is strewn with large boulders of Winooski limestone and Laurentian gneiss.

According to Abenaki legend, Oodzee-hozo ("he who created himself") lived before the invention of legs. As he dragged his body around, he created mountains, valleys and rivers, as well as Lake Champlain, which is holy to the Abenaki. Oodzee-hozo turned himself into this rock in the lake, and there his spirit lives.

An 1896 newspaper article says the Huron and Iroquois would meet here at what they called Wujahose to make their treaties. I see a similarity between this name and the Abenaki's, but I have to wonder whether the Iroquois and Huron knew of or cared about the Abenaki legend and whether they would have been meeting here if they thought it was the embodiment of such a powerful spirit.

Nobody has ever turned up any documentation of the modern name. It is thus assumed that someone way back when called it a dunder (stupid) rock, most likely referring to its danger to navigation on the lake. It is roughly 2.8 miles due SW from the Burlington ferry dock.

The default picture and GPS position are from the deck of The Spirit of Ethan Allen, a tour boat operating out of Burlington. The rock is visible from just about every publicly accessible point on the Burlington shoreline south of Appletree Point (N 44 29.945, W 073 16.389); the closest one can get on publicly accessible land is just below the tip of Shelburne Point, near the entrance of the Shelburne Marina (N 44 26.093, W 073 15.060). You could probably land on it (very carefully) if you have your own boat.