Champlain Thrust

{{Short description|Fault in Quebec, Vermont, and New York}}

{{Infobox mountain

| name = Champlain Thrust

| photo =Champlain_Thrust_Lone_Rock.jpg

| photo_caption = Champlain Thrust Fault, Lone Rock Point, Burlington Vermont

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| orogeny = Taconic Orogeny

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| age = Ordovician

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The Champlain Thrust is a 200-mile long fault extending from southern Quebec, down through western Vermont in the Champlain Valley, and into eastern New York in the Catskills/Hudson Valley.{{cite web|title=The Champlain Thrust…what is it?|url=http://www.uvm.edu/geology/?Page=enews/champlainthrust.html|publisher=University of Vermont Department of Geology|accessdate=25 April 2016}} This east dipping thrust fault transports Cambrian-Ordovician passive margin shelf rocks westward by about {{convert|30|-|50|mi}} and places them on top of Middle Ordovician rocks. The Middle Ordovician accretion of the one or more island arcs terranes drove the initial thrusting during the Taconic Orogeny, though reactivation of the fault may have occurred during the middle Devonian Acadian Orogeny.Nicholas W. Hayman and W. S. F. Kidd., Reactivation of prethrusting, synconvergence normal faults as ramps within the Ordovician Champlain-Taconic thrust system., Geological Society of America Bulletin (April 2002), 114(4):476-489Rolf Stanley, The Champlain thrust fault, Lone Rock Point, Burlington, Vermont., Geological Society of America Centennial Field Guide--Northeast Section, 1987 The Champlain Thrust marks the most westerly thrust of the Taconic Orogeny.