Pacific Gas and Electric Company
The Pacific Gas and Electric Company is an American investor-owned utility with publicly traded stock, headquartered in the Pacific Gas & Electric Building in San Francisco. PG&E provides natural gas and electricity to most of the northern two-thirds of California, from Bakersfield and Barstow to near the Oregon State Line and Nevada and Arizona State Line, which represents 5.2 million households. PG&E is overseen by the California Public Utilities Commission, it is the leading subsidiary of the holding company PG&E Corporation, which has a market capitalization of $3.242 billion as of January 16, 2019. It was founded by George H. Roe after California's Gold Rush and by 1984 was the United States' "largest electric utility business." PG&E is one of four regulated, investor-owned utilities s in California. In the 1850s, manufactured gas was introduced in the United States as a means of lighting. Gasworks were built in the larger eastern American cities, but there was no gas industry in the West, however.
In San Francisco, street lighting was available only on Merchant Street, in the form of oil lamps. Three brothers—Peter and Michael Donahue—became interested in gas manufacturing while running the foundry that became Union Iron Works, the largest shipbuilding operation on the West Coast. Joseph G. Eastland, an engineer and clerk at the foundry, joined them in gathering as much information on gas making as they could find. In July 1852, James applied for and received from the Common Council of the City of San Francisco a franchise to erect a gasworks, lay pipes in the streets and install street lamps to light the city with "brilliant gas"; the council specified that gas should be supplied to households "at such rates as will make it to their interest to use it in preference to any other material". The Donahue brothers and Eastland incorporated the San Francisco Gas Company on August 31, 1852, with $150,000 of authorized capital; the company became the first gas utility in the West. Its official seal bore the inscription "Fiat Lux"—let there be light—the same slogan adopted by the University of California.
There were 11 original stockholders, the three Donahue brothers subscribed for 610 of the 1,500 shares. The original location for the gas works was bounded by First, Fremont and Natoma streets south of Market, on the shore of the San Francisco Bay. Work on the plant started in November 1852, it was ready for operation only a few months later. On the night of February 11, 1854, the streets of San Francisco were for the first time lighted by gas. To celebrate the event, the company held a gala banquet at the Oriental Hotel. Gas lighting gained public favor. In the first year of operation, there were 237 customers; that number more than doubled the next year, to 563. By the end of 1855, the company had laid more than 6 ½ miles of pipe and 154 street lamps were in operation; the growing popularity of gas light led to the establishment of competing gas companies, including Aubin Patent Gas Company and Citizens Gas Company. These smaller companies were acquired by the San Francisco Gas Company. However, one rival provided serious competition.
The City Gas Company was founded in April 1870 by the Bank of California to compete with the gas monopoly held by the Donahue brothers' operation. City Gas initiated a price war with the San Francisco Gas Company. In 1873, the companies negotiated their consolidation as a compromise and the Bank of California gained part ownership of "the most lucrative gas monopoly in the West". On April 1, 1873, the San Francisco Gas Light Company was formed, representing a merger of the San Francisco Gas Company, the City Gas Company, the Metropolitan Gas Company. Gas utilities, including San Francisco Gas Light, faced new competition with the introduction of electric lighting to California. According to a 2012 PG&E publication and their 1952 commissioned history, in 1879, San Francisco was the first city in the U. S. to have a central generating station for electric customers. To stay competitive, the San Francisco Gas Light Company introduced the Argand lamp that same year; the lamp increased the light capacity of gas street lamps, but proved to be an expensive improvement and was not adopted.
Meanwhile, the demand for electric light in the stores and factories of downtown San Francisco continued to grow. The first electric street light was erected in 1888 in front of City Hall, the electrical grid supporting it was extended. A second generating station was constructed in 1888 by the California Electric Light Company to increase production capacity. New competition emerged in the 1880s in the form of water gas, an improved illuminant patented by Thaddeus Lowe; the United Gas Improvement Company, a water gas manufacturer organized after purchasing the Lowe gas patents, acquired a lease and an interest in San Francisco's Central Gas Light Company on November 1, 1883. United was acquired by the Pacific Gas Improvement Company in 1884. Under the management of president Albert Miller, Pacific Gas Improvement developed into a formidable competitor to San Francisco Gas Light. Horace A. Miller, Secretary and C. O. G. Miller, President and controlled not only the Pacific Gas Improvement Company but the Pacific Gas Lighting Company.
C. O. G. Miller is buried in a Pyramid mausoleum at Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland CA. Horace Miller built an enormous mansion in Piedmont, CA at 445 Mountain Avenue in 1913, designed by Arthur Brown, famous San Francisco architect. In 1888, San Francisco Gas Light built its own water gas plant at the Potrero gas works
Bank
A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates credit. Lending activities can be performed either indirectly through capital markets. Due to their importance in the financial stability of a country, banks are regulated in most countries. Most nations have institutionalized a system known as fractional reserve banking under which banks hold liquid assets equal to only a portion of their current liabilities. In addition to other regulations intended to ensure liquidity, banks are subject to minimum capital requirements based on an international set of capital standards, known as the Basel Accords. Banking in its modern sense evolved in the 14th century in the prosperous cities of Renaissance Italy but in many ways was a continuation of ideas and concepts of credit and lending that had their roots in the ancient world. In the history of banking, a number of banking dynasties – notably, the Medicis, the Fuggers, the Welsers, the Berenbergs, the Rothschilds – have played a central role over many centuries.
The oldest existing retail bank is Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, while the oldest existing merchant bank is Berenberg Bank. The concept of banking may have begun in ancient Assyria and Babylonia, with merchants offering loans of grain as collateral within a barter system. Lenders in ancient Greece and during the Roman Empire added two important innovations: they accepted deposits and changed money. Archaeology from this period in ancient China and India shows evidence of money lending. More modern banking can be traced to medieval and early Renaissance Italy, to the rich cities in the centre and north like Florence, Siena and Genoa; the Bardi and Peruzzi families dominated banking in 14th-century Florence, establishing branches in many other parts of Europe. One of the most famous Italian banks was the Medici Bank, set up by Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici in 1397; the earliest known state deposit bank, Banco di San Giorgio, was founded in 1407 at Italy. Modern banking practices, including fractional reserve banking and the issue of banknotes, emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Merchants started to store their gold with the goldsmiths of London, who possessed private vaults, charged a fee for that service. In exchange for each deposit of precious metal, the goldsmiths issued receipts certifying the quantity and purity of the metal they held as a bailee; the goldsmiths began to lend the money out on behalf of the depositor, which led to the development of modern banking practices. The goldsmith paid interest on these deposits. Since the promissory notes were payable on demand, the advances to the goldsmith's customers were repayable over a longer time period, this was an early form of fractional reserve banking; the promissory notes developed into an assignable instrument which could circulate as a safe and convenient form of money backed by the goldsmith's promise to pay, allowing goldsmiths to advance loans with little risk of default. Thus, the goldsmiths of London became the forerunners of banking by creating new money based on credit; the Bank of England was the first to begin the permanent issue of banknotes, in 1695.
The Royal Bank of Scotland established the first overdraft facility in 1728. By the beginning of the 19th century a bankers' clearing house was established in London to allow multiple banks to clear transactions; the Rothschilds pioneered international finance on a large scale, financing the purchase of the Suez canal for the British government. The word bank was taken Middle English from Middle French banque, from Old Italian banco, meaning "table", from Old High German banc, bank "bench, counter". Benches were used as makeshift desks or exchange counters during the Renaissance by Jewish Florentine bankers, who used to make their transactions atop desks covered by green tablecloths; the definition of a bank varies from country to country. See the relevant country pages under for more information. Under English common law, a banker is defined as a person who carries on the business of banking by conducting current accounts for his customers, paying cheques drawn on him/her and collecting cheques for his/her customers.
In most common law jurisdictions there is a Bills of Exchange Act that codifies the law in relation to negotiable instruments, including cheques, this Act contains a statutory definition of the term banker: banker includes a body of persons, whether incorporated or not, who carry on the business of banking'. Although this definition seems circular, it is functional, because it ensures that the legal basis for bank transactions such as cheques does not depend on how the bank is structured or regulated; the business of banking is in many English common law countries not defined by statute but by common law, the definition above. In other English common law jurisdictions there are statutory definitions of the business of banking or banking business; when looking at these definitions it is important to keep in mind that they are defining the business of banking for the purposes of the legislation, not in general. In particular, most of the definitions are from legislation that has the purpose of regulating and supervising banks rather than regulating the actual business of banking.
However, in many cases the statutory definition mirrors the common law one. Examples of statutory definitions: "banking business" means the business of receiving money on current or deposit account and collecting cheques drawn by or paid in by customers, the making
Mediumship
Mediumship is the practice of purportedly mediating communication between spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as "mediums." There are different types including spirit channeling and ouija. Humans have been fascinated with contacting the dead since the beginning of human existence. Cave paintings by indigenous Australians date back 28,000 years, some depicting skulls, bones and the afterlife. Other cave paintings in Indonesia date back a further 10,000 years. Mediumship gained popularity during the nineteenth century, when ouija boards were used by the upper classes as a source of entertainment. Investigations during this period revealed widespread fraud—with some practitioners employing techniques used by stage magicians—and the practice began to lose credibility. Fraud is still rife in the medium/psychic industry, with cases of deception and trickery being discovered to this day. Scientific researchers have attempted to ascertain the validity of claims of mediumship.
An experiment undertaken by the British Psychological Society led to the conclusion that the test subjects demonstrated no mediumistic ability. Several different variants of mediumship exist. Other forms involve materializations of the spirit or the presence of a voice, telekinetic activity; the practice is associated with several religious-belief systems such as Vodun, Spiritism, Candomblé, Voodoo and some New Age groups. In Spiritism and Spiritualism the medium has the role of an intermediary between the world of the living and the world of spirit. Mediums claim that they can listen to and relay messages from spirits, or that they can allow a spirit to control their body and speak through it directly or by using automatic writing or drawing. Spiritualists classify types of mediumship into two main categories: "mental" and "physical": Mental mediums purportedly "tune in" to the spirit world by listening, sensing, or seeing spirits or symbols. Physical mediums are believed to produce materialization of spirits, apports of objects, other effects such as knocking, bell-ringing, etc. by using "ectoplasm" created from the cells of their bodies and those of séance attendees.
During seances, mediums are said to go into trances, varying from light to deep, that permit spirits to control their minds. Channeling can be seen as the modern form of the old mediumship, where the "channel" purportedly receives messages from "teaching-spirit", an "Ascended master", from God, or from an angelic entity, but through the filter of his own waking consciousness. Attempts to communicate with the dead and other living human beings, aka spirits, have been documented back to early human history; the story of the Witch of Endor tells of one who raised the spirit of the deceased prophet Samuel to allow the Hebrew king Saul to question his former mentor about an upcoming battle, as related in the Books of Samuel in the Jewish Tanakh. Mediumship became quite popular in the 19th-century United States and the United Kingdom after the rise of Spiritualism as a religious movement. Modern Spiritualism is said to date from practices and lectures of the Fox sisters in New York State in 1848.
The trance mediums Paschal Beverly Randolph and Emma Hardinge Britten were among the most celebrated lecturers and authors on the subject in the mid-19th century. Allan Kardec coined the term Spiritism around 1860. Kardec claimed that conversations with spirits by selected mediums were the basis of his The Spirits' Book and his five-book collection, Spiritist Codification; some scientists of the period who investigated spiritualism became converts. They included chemist Robert Hare, physicist William Crookes and evolutionary biologist Alfred Russel Wallace. Nobel laureate Pierre Curie took a serious scientific interest in the work of medium Eusapia Palladino. Other prominent adherents included journalist and pacifist William T. Stead and physician and author Arthur Conan Doyle. After the exposure of the fraudulent use of stage magic tricks by physical mediums such as the Davenport Brothers and the Bangs Sisters, mediumship fell into disrepute. However, the religion and its beliefs continue in spite of this, with physical mediumship and seances falling out of practice and platform mediumship coming to the fore.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s there were around one quarter of a million practising Spiritualists and some two thousand Spiritualist societies in the UK in addition to flourishing microcultures of platform mediumship and'home circles'. Spiritualism continues to be practiced through various denominational spiritualist churches in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. In the United Kingdom, over 340 spiritualist churches and centres open their doors to the public and free demonstrations of mediumship are performed. In 1958, the English-born Spiritualist C. Dorreen Phillips wrote of her experiences with a medium at Camp Chesterfield, Indiana: "In Rev. James Laughton's séances there are many Indians, they are noisy and appear to have great power. The little guides, or doorkeepers, are Indian boys and girls as messengers who help to locate the spirit friends who wish to speak with you." A spirit who uses a medium to manipulate psychic "energy" or "energy systems." In old-line Spiritualism, a portion of the services toward the end, is given over to demonstrations of mediumship throu
San Francisco
San Francisco the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural and financial center of Northern California. San Francisco is the 13th-most populous city in the United States, the fourth-most populous in California, with 884,363 residents as of 2017, it covers an area of about 46.89 square miles at the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area, making it the second-most densely populated large US city, the fifth-most densely populated U. S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. San Francisco is part of the fifth-most populous primary statistical area in the United States, the San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area; as of 2017, it was the seventh-highest income county in the United States, with a per capita personal income of $119,868. As of 2015, San Francisco proper had a GDP of $154.2 billion, a GDP per capita of $177,968. The San Francisco CSA was the country's third-largest urban economy as of 2017, with a GDP of $907 billion.
Of the 500+ primary statistical areas in the US, the San Francisco CSA had among the highest GDP per capita in 2017, at $93,938. San Francisco was ranked 14th in the world and third in the United States on the Global Financial Centres Index as of September 2018. San Francisco was founded on June 29, 1776, when colonists from Spain established Presidio of San Francisco at the Golden Gate and Mission San Francisco de Asís a few miles away, all named for St. Francis of Assisi; the California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856. San Francisco's status as the West Coast's largest city peaked between 1870 and 1900, when around 25% of California's population resided in the city proper. After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a major port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater.
It became the birthplace of the United Nations in 1945. After the war, the confluence of returning servicemen, significant immigration, liberalizing attitudes, along with the rise of the "hippie" counterculture, the Sexual Revolution, the Peace Movement growing from opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, other factors led to the Summer of Love and the gay rights movement, cementing San Francisco as a center of liberal activism in the United States. Politically, the city votes along liberal Democratic Party lines. A popular tourist destination, San Francisco is known for its cool summers, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of architecture, landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, the former Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, Fisherman's Wharf, its Chinatown district. San Francisco is the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. Gap Inc. Fitbit, Salesforce.com, Reddit, Inc. Dolby, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Pinterest, Uber, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation and Weather Underground.
It is home to a number of educational and cultural institutions, such as the University of San Francisco, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco State University, the De Young Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the California Academy of Sciences. As of 2019, San Francisco is the highest rated American city on world liveability rankings; the earliest archaeological evidence of human habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. The Yelamu group of the Ohlone people resided in a few small villages when an overland Spanish exploration party, led by Don Gaspar de Portolà, arrived on November 2, 1769, the first documented European visit to San Francisco Bay. Seven years on March 28, 1776, the Spanish established the Presidio of San Francisco, followed by a mission, Mission San Francisco de Asís, established by the Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the area became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the mission system ended, its lands became privatized.
In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first independent homestead, near a boat anchorage around what is today Portsmouth Square. Together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7, 1846, during the Mexican–American War, Captain John B. Montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, Mexico ceded the territory to the United States at the end of the war. Despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography; the California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers. With their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849; the promise of great wealth was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor.
Some of these 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships and hotels.
Lumber
Lumber or timber is a type of wood, processed into beams and planks, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber is used for structural purposes but has many other uses as well. There are two main types of lumber, it may be surfaced on one or more of its faces. Besides pulpwood, rough lumber is the raw material for furniture-making and other items requiring additional cutting and shaping, it is available in many species hardwoods. Finished lumber is supplied in standard sizes for the construction industry – softwood, from coniferous species, including pine and spruce, hemlock, but some hardwood, for high-grade flooring, it is more made from softwood than hardwoods, 80% of lumber comes from softwood. In the United States milled boards of wood are referred to as lumber. However, in Britain and other Commonwealth nations, the term timber is instead used to describe sawn wood products, like floor boards. In the United States and Canada timber describes standing or felled trees. In Canada, lumber describes cut and surfaced wood.
In the United Kingdom, the word lumber is used in relation to wood and has several other meanings, including unused or unwanted items. Referring to wood, Timber is universally used instead. Remanufactured lumber is the result of secondary or tertiary processing/cutting of milled lumber, it is lumber cut for industrial or wood-packaging use. Lumber is cut by ripsaw or resaw to create dimensions that are not processed by a primary sawmill. Resawing is the splitting of 1-inch through 12-inch hardwood or softwood lumber into two or more thinner pieces of full-length boards. For example, splitting a ten-foot 2×4 into two ten-foot 1×4s is considered resawing. Structural lumber may be produced from recycled plastic and new plastic stock, its introduction has been opposed by the forestry industry. Blending fiberglass in plastic lumber enhances its strength and fire resistance. Plastic fiberglass structural lumber can have a "class 1 flame spread rating of 25 or less, when tested in accordance with ASTM standard E 84," which means it burns slower than all treated wood lumber.
Logs are converted into timber by being hewn, or split. Sawing with a rip saw is the most common method, because sawing allows logs of lower quality, with irregular grain and large knots, to be used and is more economical. There are various types of sawing: Plain sawn – A log sawn through without adjusting the position of the log and the grain runs across the width of the boards. Quarter sawn and rift sawn – These terms have been confused in history but mean lumber sawn so the annual rings are reasonably perpendicular to the sides of the lumber. Boxed heart – The pith remains within the piece with some allowance for exposure. Heart center – the center core of a log. Free of heart center – A side-cut timber without any pith. Free of knots – No knots are present. Dimensional lumber is lumber, cut to standardized width and depth, specified in inches. Carpenters extensively use dimensional lumber in framing wooden buildings. Common sizes include 2×4, 2×6, 4×4; the length of a board is specified separately from the width and depth.
It is thus possible to find 2×4s that are four and twelve feet in length. In Canada and the United States, the standard lengths of lumber are 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22 and 24 feet. For wall framing, "stud" or "precut" sizes are available, are used. For an eight-, nine-, or ten-foot ceiling height, studs are available in 92 5⁄8 inches, 104 5⁄8 inches, 116 5⁄8 inches; the term "stud" is used inconsistently to specify length. Under the prescription of the Method of Construction issued by the Southern Song government in the early 12th century, timbers were standardized to eight cross-sectional dimensions. Regardless of the actual dimensions of the timber, the ratio between width and height was maintained at 1:1.5. Units are in Song Dynasty inches. Timber smaller than the 8th class were called "unclassed"; the width of a timber is referred to as one "timber", the dimensions of other structural components were quoted in multiples of "timber". The dimensions of timbers in similar application show a gradual diminution from the Sui Dyansty to the modern era.
The length of a unit of dimensional lumber is limited by the height and girth of the tree it is milled from. In general the maximum length is 24 ft. Engineered wood products, manufactured by binding the strands, fibers, or veneers of wood, together with adhesives, to form composite materials, offer more flexibility and greater structural strength than typical wood building materials. Pre-cut studs save a framer much time, because they are pre-cut by the manufacturer for use in 8-, 9-
Vermont
Vermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It borders the U. S. states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, New York to the west, the Canadian province of Quebec to the north. Vermont is the second-smallest by population and the sixth-smallest by area of the 50 U. S. states. The state capital is the least populous state capital in the United States; the most populous city, Burlington, is the least populous city to be the most populous city in a state. As of 2015, Vermont was the leading producer of maple syrup in the United States. In crime statistics, it was ranked as the safest state in the country in 2016. For thousands of years, indigenous peoples, including the Mohawk and the Algonquian-speaking Abenaki, occupied much of the territory, now Vermont and was claimed by France's colony of New France. France ceded the territory to Great Britain after being defeated in 1763 in the Seven Years' War. Thereafter, the nearby colonies the provinces of New Hampshire and New York, disputed the extent of the area called the New Hampshire Grants to the west of the Connecticut River, encompassing present-day Vermont.
The provincial government of New York sold land grants to settlers in the region, which conflicted with earlier grants from the government of New Hampshire. The Green Mountain Boys militia protected the interests of the established New Hampshire land grant settlers against the newly arrived settlers with land titles granted by New York. A group of settlers with New Hampshire land grant titles established the Vermont Republic in 1777 as an independent state during the American Revolutionary War; the Vermont Republic abolished slavery before any of the other states. Vermont was admitted to the newly established United States as the fourteenth state in 1791. Vermont is one of only four U. S. states that were sovereign states, given that the original 13 states were former colonies. During the mid 19th century, Vermont was a strong source of abolitionist sentiment and sent a significant contingent of soldiers to participate in the American Civil War. Protestants and Catholics make up the majority of those reporting a religious preference with 37% reporting no religion.
Other religions individually contribute no more than 2% to the total. The geography of the state is marked by the Green Mountains, which run north–south up the middle of the state, separating Lake Champlain and other valley terrain on the west from the Connecticut River valley that defines much of its eastern border. A majority of its terrain is forested with conifers. A majority of its open land is in agriculture; the state's climate is characterized by cold, snowy winters. Vermont's economic activity of $26 billion in 2010 caused it to rank 34th in gross state product, it has been ranked 42nd as a state in. In 1960, Vermonters' politics started to shift from being reliably Republican towards favoring more liberal and progressive candidates. Starting in 1963, voters have alternated between choosing Democratic governors. Voters have chosen Democrats for president since 1992. In 2000, the state legislature was the first to recognize civil unions for same-sex couples; the origin of the name "Vermont" is uncertain, but comes from the French Les Monts Verts, meaning "the Green Mountains".
Thomas Young introduced it in 1777. In 1913, the Secretary of State of Vermont speculated that the archaic French term Mont Verd may have inspired Young. Another source points out the predominance of mica-quartz-chlorite schist, a green-hued metamorphosed shale, as a possible reason; the Green Mountains form a north–south spine running most of the length of the state west of its center. In the southwest portion of the state are located the Taconic Mountains. In the northwest, near Lake Champlain, is the fertile Champlain Valley. In the south of the valley is Lake Bomoseen. Vermont is located in the New England region of the Northeastern United States and comprises 9,614 square miles, making it the 45th-largest state, it is the only state. Land comprises 9,250 square miles and water comprises 365 square miles, making it the 43rd-largest in land area and the 47th in water area. In total area, it is smaller than Haiti, it is the only landlocked state in New England, it is the easternmost and the smallest in area of all landlocked states.
The west bank of the Connecticut River marks the state's eastern border with New Hampshire, though much of the river is within New Hampshire's territory. 41% of Vermont's land area is part of the Connecticut River's watershed. Lake Champlain, the sixth-largest body of fresh water in the United States, separates Vermont from New York in the northwest portion of the state. From north to south, Vermont is 159 miles long, its greatest width, from east to west, is 89 miles at the Canada–U. S. Border; the width averages 60.5 miles. The state's geographic center is three miles east of Roxbury, in Washington County. There are fifteen U. S. federal border crossings between Canada. Several mountains have timberlines with delicate year-round alpine ecosystems, including Mount Mansfield, the highest mountain in the state. Areas in Vermont a
