Category Archives: Maine places

A visit to Wood Island with Windows to the Wild

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During August of 2021, I kayaked out to Kittery’s Wood Island Lifesaving Station with with Windows to the Wild host Willem Lange and producers Steve Giordani and Phil Vaughn, where we spent a lovely day with Sam Reid, president of the non-profit Wood Island Lifesaving Station (WILSA), which is restoring the once-dilapidated Life Saving Station to a living museum.

The resulting show, titled Wood Island Life Saving Station, had its debut broadcast on New Hampshire Public Television on February 2, 2022, and is now available online at the NH PBS Youtube channel (Episode 1, Season 17), (and also will broadcast many times on NH PBS, WGBH, and other public television stations).

Wood Island, located just off the coast of Kittery, Maine in the Piscataqua River, is a tiny scrap of an island with a fascinating history. I’m working on a post about bootlegging in the Piscataqua River, but with one thing or another, my writing time has been limited. I’ll be posing more frequently come spring.

See the full 2022 for Windows to the Wild schedule here.

Rangeley Days Redux: Moose, mountains, and memories

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Rangeley, Maine – Our first day at the lake was windy and mostly gray, a good one for moose hunting.  We don’t always get our moose, but with the right timing and luck, we’d bagged moose last year and the year before. Could we score the hat trick?

Moose hunting in Rangeley requires strategy and preparation. First, timing. Dawn and dusk work best. Second, location: Route 16, heading towards Stratton, locally known as Moose Alley. Third, preparedness: cameras out, at the ready, not packed away in a backpack or purse.

The Coplin Dinner House offers farm-to-table dining and pub grub, in a renovated farmhouse just south of Stratton, Maine.

To carry out our plan, we drove up Route 16 and turned south in Stratton, on to Route 27, for a 6 p.m. dinner reservation at the Coplin Dinner House, a recent addition to local dining scene. The food was excellent, especially the roasted Brussel sprouts. A good meal prepared by someone else is one of my favorite gifts. Also, it makes me happy to see a young couple making it in rural Maine by establishing a successful destination restaurant in the middle of nowhere.

On the way home, as dusk settled in, we stopped in at the Town of Stratton public works garage, checking the muddy wetlands on both sides of the road. Legend has it that moose flock to these wetlands for the runoff from the town’s salt piles. However, over 15 years of looking, I have never seen a moose here. And, once again, no moose.

We continued down Route 16, as one set of passengers scanned right and the other  scanned left into the grassy meadows and dark stands of spruce, while also keeping an eye out for pulled-over vehicles, a sure sign of moose. We drove and drove, losing hope. But then, a few miles outside of Rangeley, we hit the jackpot: a car pulled over on the  right!

Mother moose and her calf, on Route 16, aka “Moose Alley,” between Rangeley and Stratton, Maine.

Spotting one moose makes me happy.  A lengthy roadside visit with a mother moose and her calf overfilled my cup of gratitude. Our second day in Rangeley, and already the week was pretty much made. Who cares if the forecast calls for a week of wind and rain? I have books.

Just outside of Oquossoc village, the fire tower atop Bald Mountain offers views of Rangeley and Mooselookmeguntic Lakes, and endless mountains. Most hikers climb 1.3 mile trail off Bald Mountain Road, but an alternate trail from Route 4 offers a slightly longer hike (connecting with the main trail).

The rain isn’t constant, and we find a window to squeeze in a hike to Bald Mountain, just across the lake.  A dozen years ago, when we were coaxing five-year-olds up the trail, Bald Mountain seemed like a major hike.  But now, climbing Bald is a warm-up for more ambitious adventures.  Other nearby favorites include Tumbledown Mountain and Aziscohos Mountain (see link at the bottom of the post), but I am always on the lookout for a new destination.

Blueberry Mountain (2,962 feet), just outside of Weld, seemed like the right fit for our group’s mix of hiking experience: a 4.4 mile round-trip to an open summit.  On Wednesday, we enjoyed an excellent hike under gray skies, including a walk on open granite as we neared the summit. I love the feeling of freedom I experience on a mountaintop.

Atop the summit of Blueberry Mountain in Weld, and watching the clouds roll in over Jackson and Tumbledown Mountains. Blueberry Mountain is located off Route 142, about a half-hour from downtown Rangeley.

Blueberry Mountain had its fair share of blueberries, but nothing like the bonanza of blueberries at the Wilhelm Reich Museum property, where the public is welcome to pick. The blueberry crop varies from year to year; this harvest was exceptional.  My freezer is full of blueberry anti-oxidants and I am ready for Thanksgiving, and my annual contribution of Rangeley wild blueberry pie. Baking that pie the day before Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holiday rituals.

My mother, now age 83, always joins us for the blueberry picking, but she can’t climb mountains. That’s why I love Quill Hill, in Dallas Plantation, a few miles outside of Rangeley (and off Route 16). A local contractor has built an elegant four-mile dirt road to the Quill Hill summit so that everyone can enjoy the spectacular 360 degree views. Visiting Quill Hill requires a $10 admission fee, but this hill is a labor of love, not profit.  Taking my mom to this sunset view makes me happy.

Sunset at 2,848-foot Quill Hill, where visitors enjoy views of the Rangeley Lakes, Western Maine mountains, and Flagstaff Lake.

We visited Quill Hill on our last night in Rangeley, so the evening there was bittersweet.  A beautiful evening, magnificent colors — but also a reminder that our time in Rangeley –and everywhere — is fleeting.

I need to remember it all.  The baby loon with its mother in Hunter Cove.  Sunny (and windy) afternoons on the dock.  Reading on the porch. Gathering around the campfire, as kids roasted marshmallows and loon calls echoed across the lake. On Saturday morning, I packed up these memories along with dirty laundry and leftover food.  After packing the car, I took one last set of photos,  and we hit the road, filled up until next summer.

From the dock, we can see the sun sets over Bald Mountain.

Sources and resources:

For a detailed description of the trail to Blueberry Mountain, see the excellent greatly expanded 2018 edition of the Maine Mountain Guide edited by Cary Kish. (Also, note that there is another Blueberry Mountain in Maine, in Evans Notch.

For more reading on Rangeley, see my post, “Rangeley days, now far away.”

For more info on Tumbledown, Aziscohos, and other great family hikes, see my post, “Round-up: Five great family hikes in Maine” (in which I also happen to discuss the Evans Notch Blueberry Mountain).

Walking with the mothers at Vaughan Woods, South Berwick

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South Berwick, Maine — On Mother’s Day this year, I went for a walk with the mothers in Vaughan Woods State Park.

Vaughan Woods is a popular local walking spot, as it includes, along with its three miles of trails, the imposing presence of the 1785 Georgian-style Hamilton House. Walking in Vaughan Woods was a wonderful Mother’s Day gift because I hadn’t been there in many years, and had forgotten the simple beauty of the woodland trail along the Salmon Falls River. After a cold April, everyone we encountered that sunny morning in May was happy to be outside, and we wished a good day to many mothers out strolling with children young and old.

Mothers have walked these 80+acres for centuries. Here are a few of pieces of their stories.

Walking along the trail beside the Salmon Falls River, we came upon the view of Hamilton House, built in 1785 by Colonel Jonathan Hamilton, an enterprising merchant and community leader. The Colonel married Mary Manning in 1771. Mary likely walked on this land with her two children, Betsey and Joseph, born a year apart. But Mary’s wealth couldn’t protect her family from the democratic afflictions common to all in the 18th century. Young Joseph died at age 15, and Betsey a few years later, at age 21, after giving birth to her first child, an infant who died a few months after her mother. When Mary Manning Hamilton died at age 50 in 1800, her obituary noted, among many other qualities, that she was “a peculiarly kind & tender Mother.”

One of the first European-American mothers to walk in this forest was Margaret Warren, mother of five, whose home was located on a high spot in the woods, and probably had a view of Cow Cove, since the site was likely soon cleared of most trees. Margaret, who hailed from Ireland and landed in Kittery, came here after marrying James Warren.

James was a Scotsman who had survived the 1650 Battle of Dunbar, where he was taken prisoner by Oliver Cromwell’s forces , then shipped out to the colonies and sold as an indentured servant.

James probably served the first part of his indenture at the Lynn Iron Works, but came with his master Richard Leader to Kittery – which then encompassed today’s town of South Berwick – around 1651 to build a saw mill at the falls of Great Works River (which enters the Salmon Falls River a short distance above Vaughan Woods). Somewhere along the way he met Margaret, and they married in 1654, by which time James had acquired his land.  They had their first child – or perhaps their first surviving child, Gilbert, by 1656.

The slight indention of a cellar hole mark the Warren homesite at Vaughan Woods.

The Warrens both had strong constitutions, with James dying in 1702, at age 81, and Margaret in 1713, who was probably in her 80s by then  (date of birth unknown).  Margaret and James lived in a time of sporadic but intense conflict between settlers and the Wabanaki. Her daughter Grizel Warren Otis, at age 24, and infant granddaughter Margaret — just a few months old — were taken as captives during the Wabanaki raid at Cocheco (Dover) in June 1689*.  I imagine that Margaret could see the smoke billowing in the distance as several houses burned across the river in New Hampshire.

As the crow flies, Cocheco was not far away — across the river and further inland. Word must have spread quickly, with Margaret soon learning of the death of her granddaughter, three-year-old Hannah, along with her daughter’s 64-year-old husband, the blacksmith Richard Otis.  She must have worried about Grizel and her fate.

Was Margaret hopeful when she eventually learned that Grizel had been taken to Montreal? Grizel, however, never returned home. She became a Catholic, took the name Madeleine, married a Frenchman, Philippe Robitaille, and started a new family. I’m guessing she was happier in Montreal, where she lived until her death at age 90. Unlike her old goat first husband, Grizel’s Frenchman Philippe was the same age, and together they had five children.

Margaret did not live to see the return of her granddaughter, Margaret, a remarkable woman known as Christine Otis Baker (Hotesse), who after many adventures landed back in Dover in 1734.  Christine-Margaret had married in Canada, but after seven years and three children, she became a young widow in 1714. Eventually she married Captain Thomas Baker of Deerfield, Massachusetts, whom she had met in Montreal, first in 1701 when he was a captive and then again in 1714 when he returned to Montreal on a negotiating mission.

French authorities would not allow her to leave Montreal with her property or her children, and she left her children behind to return to New England with Baker.  Although she later returned to Montreal to try to regain custody of her children, the authorities would not allow her to see them.  Christine soldiered on, had another son, and lived out her years, until her mid-80s, in Dover, New Hampshire, where she was well-known as a tavern keeper.

Almost 200 years after these events, another mother — a stepmother — served as indirect catalyst for reviving and remembering the stories of these earlier mothers.

Emily Tyson and Sarah Orne Jewett, in the garden at Hamilton House. Elise Tyson Vaughan, an accomplished photographer, was the photographer (Historic New England photo; citation below).

In 1898, Emily Tyson, the widow of railroad magnate George Tyson, and her stepdaughter Elise (Elizabeth) Tyson purchased the house on the recommendation of their writer friend Sarah One Jewett. The mother-daughter pair wanted to spend summers in Maine, away from the heat and pollution of Boston. By then, Hamilton House had fallen into disrepair, as the Hamilton fortune evaporated in the early 1800s (probably due in large part to Jefferson’s Embargo Act).  Several generations of the Goodwin family had tried to farm the property, but could not turn the tide on the steady decline of farming in 19th century Maine.

The two women restored the house to its former grandeur. Along with their York friend Elizabeth Perkins, they were leaders in the Colonial Revival movement** that led to a renewed interest in colonial-era history and the preservation of many colonial-era dwellings.

Elise Tyson married Henry Goodman Vaughan later in life, when she was in her mid-forties, and did not have children, but she nurtured artists and writers who frequented her home, as well as her own craft of photography.

Elise also was the mother of this park, donating the Hamilton House and the surrounding land to the state of Maine upon her death in 1949.  Now, on Mother’s Day and every other day of the year, we walk in her footsteps and those who came before.

The Warren home purportedly looked down upon Cow Cove, another historic location where, in 1634, the ship the Pied Cow anchored, and offloaded livestock and supplies to build the first sawmill at the Great Works falls. James Warren and other Scottish prisoners came 17 years later to work on rebuilding and expanding that first mill.

Notes and resources

Although you don’t really need a map to walk the trails of Vaughan Woods, the trail map here provides a good sense of the different locations described in my post.

Hamilton House, owned by Historic New England, is open for tours from June through October.  On summer Sundays, visitors enjoy concerts in the garden.

Thanks to the Old Berwick Historical Society for many specific dates and pieces of information from its information-rich website.

Sarah Orne Jewett’s romance novel, The Tory Lover, features Hamilton House as its setting, and features a cast of characters drawn from Maine-NH Seacoast history.

For more on the remarkable story of Christine Otis Baker, see Christine Otis Baker, Captured by Indians, Dover Public Library, Dover, N.H.

For more on James Warren and the Scottish prisoners of Dunbar, see “James Warren, #108 on ‘The Dunbar Prisoners’ List” at the website/blog, Scottish Prisoners of War.

Other sources for this post include www.geni.com, especially for Grizel Warren Otis Robitaille, and the Warren family genealogy at archive.org, especially for Margaret/Christine Otis Baker.

*On the Cocheco Raid: This raid was essentially a revenge attack upon Cocheco, in retaliation for an event near the end of King Philip’s War in which Major Richard Waldron of Cocheco invited hundreds of native people to his trading post for a peace parley. Instead, Waldron maneuvered the situation to capture 100s of native peoples, who were then executed or sold into slavery. The Cocheco Raid was one of the first events of “King William’s War,” or what many called the “Second IndianWar.” For more details, I highly recommend Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War by Lisa Brooks, which includes a companion website, especially Captivity at Cocheco.

**On the Colonial Revival Movement: I am aware that this movement also had its origins in the anti-immigration movement of the early 20th century, a time of peak immigration.  Tracing ancestry to the colonial era was a way of establishing legitimacy and superiority to the “hordes” flocking to America. That said, Colonial Revival resulted in the preservation of many buildings that might have been lost to the wrecking ball, as well as of documents, ephemera, and other clues that historians continue to unravel today to tell ever more interesting and complex histories of early America.

Vaughan, Elizabeth R. Full-length informal portrait of Emily Davis Tyson and Sarah Orne Jewett standing in the doorway of Hamilton House, South Berwick, Maine, undated. n.d. Web. 06 Jul 2018. <https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth-oai:bz60dd41p>.

Monuments, politics, and the cycle of forgetting: Remembering Bashka Paeff’s “Horrors of War”

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In Kittery, Maine, beneath the shade of an oak tree on a peaceful green common stands a monument that once stood in the cross-hairs of a politician who didn’t like its focus on the horrors of war. Today, many pass this monument daily, in their car and on foot, but Bashka Paeff’s beautiful bronze bas-relief sculpture, “The Sacrifices of War,” is now an almost forgotten part of the landscape.  This Centennial Year of War War I offers an opportunity to remember Paeff’s original title: “The Horrors of War.”

Bashka Paeff’s sculpture, “The Sacrifices of War,” was dedicated in 1925 as Maine’s Sailors and Soldiers Memorial for those who died in World War I. The newly-opened Memorial Bridge made Route 1 the main gateway into Maine, and the monument, located in Kittery’s John Paul Jones Park, greeted visitors as they crossed the bridge.

Born in Russia in 1894, Paeff immigrated to Boston with her family as an infant. There, she attended the Massachusetts Normal Art School, and then the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and worked as a subway token collector to support herself during the early stages of her art career.

The State of Maine commissioned the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial in 1919 to memorialize the soldiers and sailors who died in what was then called the Great War. The state had selected this site as part of the Memorial Bridge project designed to ease travel from Portsmouth to Kittery. At the time, an older wooden toll bridge, dating to the 1840s, connected the towns further upriver, but most people travelled back and forth by ferry to Badger’s Island.

Paeff’s mother holds her baby close to protect the child from the horror of war.

Paeff’s sculpture centers on mother protectively holding her child above two dead soldiers who lay by her feet. At the time, according to scholar Jennifer Wingate, the “patriotic mother” was the focus of wartime art and propaganda, and post-war memorials. Images of the patriotic mother might be combined with images glorifying war, for example, a rifle or helmet garlanded with laurel leaves. The “pacifist mother,” by contrast, was associated with Bolshevism and radicalism, and definitely out of the mainstream. Paeff’s portrayal of a pacifist mother, Wingate tells us, “expressed her firmly held view that war memorials should not glorify war” (31).

A dog tries to comfort a soldier who has died.

Another dead soldier has fallen on the left side of the protective mother.

So why did rural and conservative Maine choose to commission a pacifist monument to greet visitors at the state’s main entry point?

In 1924, Maine Governor Percival Baxter, a Republican, worked with a commission that included veterans and other military representatives to select Paeff’s design from 20 proposals. Baxter specifically had solicited proposals that portrayed the devastation and not the glory of war; he wanted a pacifist monument for Maine. The state contracted with Paeff to develop the sculpture and monument for $15,000 (a fee which included all costs associated with building the monument, not just for the sculpture itself).

And then there was an election.

Republican Ralph Owen Brewster, riding on a wave of populist anti-immigration sentiment, and aided by an endorsement from the KKK, was elected governor in 1924 and took office in 1925.

Governor Brewster did not like Paeff’s design, calling it a “more of a glorification of pacifism than of [Maine’s] part in the global conflict” (quoted in Wingate, 35). Paeff had already completed a large clay model of the sculpture, but Brewster declared that he would not pay for it unless Paeff modified the design. A political battle ensued with former Governor Baxter defending the monument in the Portland Press Herald:

The Memorial is striking and teaches a lesson….it portrays the sacrifices made by women and children as well as by men….It would have been easy to have selected the usual form of a memorial with soldiers in uniform carrying guns, making the usual appeal to the martial spirit. The present memorial, however, depicts what war really is” (quoted in Wingate, 36).

Paeff carved this low-relief image of fighting soldiers as part of a compromise with Governor Brewster.

Ultimately Brewster had to honor Paeff’s contract. However, she agreed to some small alterations. In the background, she added two fighting soldiers and a line of marching soldiers, carrying rifles and ready to fight. The background figures, however, are only visible to viewers standing close to the monument. To passersby, they are invisible. And the name of the monument was changed, from “The Horrors of War” to “The Sacrifices of War.”

This low-relief line of marching soldiers was also added to the monument to placate Gov. Brewster.

In an interesting twist, at the dedication ceremony, Major General Clarence R. Edwards, re-branded the monument to align with Governor Brewster’s view. The frightened mother, he said, was appealing “to the soldiery to save her babe from harm” (quoted from various news accounts in Wingate, 36).

Bashka Paeff was still a young woman when she created “The Sacrifices of War” and she went on to a have a prolific and distinguished career, actively working until her death in 1979.

But after a time, the controversy as well as the memorial were forgotten. The bronze tarnished green. The concrete urns that anchor the monument ended up in the Piscataqua River. In 2000-2001, a $40,000 grant paid for the monument’s cleaning and restoration, and “The Sacrifices of War” was rededicated at a ceremony with then-Governor Angus King in May, 2001.

Paeff’s original intent is evident in the memorial, which reminds us of war’s horrors  — something generals, soldiers and sailors, military families, and civilians in war zones know all too well, and which the rest of us can all too easily forget. Taking a moment to stop in John Paul Jones Park to look at Paeff’s monument provides us with an opportunity to remember.

Sources and resources

Bashka Paeff was well-known for realistic animal sculptures as well as war memorials, fountains, and portraits. Notable works include the Boy and Bird statue in the Boston Public Gardens, the Lexington Minute Men Memorial, and a statue of President Harding’s pet terrier, Laddie Boy.

“Motherhood, Memorials, and Anti-Militarism: Bashka’s Paeff’s Sacrifices of War, by Jennifer Wingate. Woman’s Art Journal. Fall/Winter 2008, 31-40. Available online via GoogleScholar (the link is not persistent, but the article is easily found).

“Pollution and salty air damage statue,” by Jeremy Corcoran. Portsmouth Herald. September 21, 2000. Updated December 16, 2010.

“Sailors and soldiers reborn,” by Amy Wallace. Portsmouth Herald. December 30, 2000. Updated January 31, 2011.

“Wisdom on war’s waste, ” by Nate Evans. Portsmouth Herald, June 1, 2001. http://www.seacoastonline.com/article/20010601/NEWS/306019984

For more history on the Memorial Bridge, and links to old Kittery photos, see my post, On Bridges and the Jet Set.

 

 

 

New Wilderness Voices: November 7 reading at RiverRun Books

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On that morning after the ice storm, I left my chilly powerless house to warm up in the forests of Mount Agamenticus.  My goal: to hunt down a tiny aphid-like insect, the woolly adelgid, that kills hemlock trees.

I had volunteered to monitor a patch of forest below the mountain, a project organized by the Maine Forest Service to stop the spread of this invasive pest, which, if left unchecked, kills hemlock trees. In the forests of North Carolina, Virginia and other states, large stands of hemlock have died off, their evergreen foliage replaced with grey brittle needles.

I went to the woods that December morning because I love hemlocks, the way their lacy branches spread out and make the woods into a cathedral. In the winter, I love seeing the patches of packed down snow beneath a hemlock’s sheltering branches–evidence that deer are keeping themselves cozy and warm.

After a couple of years spent hunting for the woolly adelgid, I learned about the Waterman Fund Alpine Essay contest. The theme for that year (2010) centered on stewardship and the wild, and I wrote an essay about the hemlock trees, “Hunting the Woolly Adelgid.” Much to my surprise and delight, I won the contest, including a $1500 prize and publication in Appalachia, the biannual journal of the Appalachian Mountain Club.

Now, that essay, along with those of other contest winners, has been published in New Wilderness Voices: Collected Essays from the Waterman Fund Contest, edited by Christine Woodside and Amy Seidl (University Press of New England, 2017).

This week, on Tuesday, November 7, at 6:30 p.m. at RiverRun Books in Portsmouth, NH, I will be reading from the book,  along with writer Bethany Taylor and editor Christine Woodside. We will also discuss this year’s Waterman Fund Contest, with its February 2018 deadline. I suspect we may also hear a bit about Christine’s 2013 book, Libertarians on the Prairie: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rose Wilder Lane, and the Making of the Little House Books, which recently came out in paperback.

The woolly adelgid develops over the winter months in tiny white ‘woolly’ cocoons attached to the bottom of hemlock foliage. The aphid, originally from Asia, has been spreading north from the southern US. A few years ago, a shipment of infected planting stock from Connecticut to Maine has further contributed to its spread.

A few years have past since I ventured out to the forest below Mount Agamenticus looking for adelgids, although I do check the underside of hemlock foliage for signs of the aphids whenever I am wandering in the woods. I’ve never found any adelgids, although others have documented infestations in the forest around the mountain and throughout the towns of York and Kittery.

Since the time that I wrote my essay, the adelgid has continued to spread in Maine, mostly in York County and along the Maine coast up through Knox County. The adelgids have benefited from a series of warm winters since 2009.  However, the Maine Forestry Service has had some success in containing the invasion by releasing adelgid-chomping beetles in heavily-impacted hemlock stands.

Here in Maine, the adelgids have killed off individual trees, but we haven’t yet seen major die-offs of hemlock trees stands. The Maine Forest Service provides an update on its website, along with information on how citizen-monitors can help contribute to efforts to manage the adeglid infestation.

A long list of other invasive species, combined with climate change are impacting our forests more with each passing year.  Although learning about these problems is discouraging, I found that caring for the trees both provides a concrete way to stem the tide, and offers a sort of forest therapy.  In getting outdoors, and being with the trees, I can deflect the blows from the onslaught of bad news about invasive pests, diseases, and other problems. Instead of looking down at a screen or other information, I look up and around me when I stand beneath the lacy umbrella of a hemlock tree.

The Little Lodges that Could: Exploring Maine’s North Woods with AMC

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I stepped outside the Library to watch the sunrise glow on snow-covered Long Pond. Not a soul or a sound deep in the North Woods of Maine.

Instead of the buzz of the snowmobiles that flock to these parts come winter, I hear my boots crunching on snow as I walk up the short hill to Gorman Chairback Lodge, to pour myself a cup of coffee. The cook is working on breakfast, but the comfortable couches around the wood stove are empty, everyone still snuggled in their beds in the cabins sprinkled on the property. The leather couches are inviting, but I take my coffee to go, for the cozy experience of reading in bed in the Library.

Inside The Library, an octogon-shaped cabin originally built by Civil War veteran X with his young son in 1867. The cabin, which sleeps four, has been renovated and rebuilt many times, but includes some original features. Propane lights provide a gentle source of light.

Inside The Library, an octogon-shaped cabin originally built by Civil War veteran W.P. Dean with his young son in the 1880s. The cabin, which sleeps four, has been renovated and rebuilt many times, but includes some original bones. No bath, or electricity, but propane gas mantle lamps provide a gentle source of light, and the fully equipped bath facility in the Lodge includes hot showers and a sauna.

This is my Florida, my Caribbean, even when the skies are gray and temperatures hover in the single digits. I’d long wanted to visit Gorman Chairback Lodge, a backcountry ski destination owned by the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC).  Scoring a stay in the Library was an added bonus.

The Library, which sits just steps away from Long Pond. Several of the rebuilt cabins at Gorman now have bathrooms, although the Library retains its 19th century rustic ambience (a walk up the hill to use the facilities).

The Library sits just steps away from Long Pond. Several of the cabins at Gorman now have bathrooms, although the Library retains its 19th century rustic ambience (a short walk to the lodge to use the facilities).

In the summer or fall, I could drive right up to Gorman, park my car, and settle in a for a week or several days of relaxing, kayaking and hiking, to Gulf Hagas, or along the Appalachian Trail, which follows Chairback Ridge not far from the lodge. And I’ll do that some day. But first, I wanted to ski in.

Setting off on a February morning to ski in to AMC's Little Lyford Lodge, the first stop on a three-day adventure.

On a February morning, we set off from the Winter Parking Lot on the Katahdin Iron Works Road (northeast of Greenville, Maine) to ski  on groomed backcountry trails into AMC’s Little Lyford Lodge, the first stop on a three-day adventure. During the winter, AMC provides snowmobile shuttle service for baggage. For an extra fee, AMC will also shuttle in passengers, making its lodges accessible to all ages and abilities.

After an 8-mile ski through the woods and then along the Pleasant River, we discovered Little Lyford Lodge in a snow-filled hollow that felt like a snug Swiss village. There, we recovered in the lodge, and baked in the sauna. That night, after a meal of hearty lasagna and conversation with other visitors, we slept soundly in our cabin.

Little Lyford Lodge is tucked into the land on First Little Lyford Pond, in the shadow of Indian Mountain. The bunkhouse, which housed three mothers and a pack of kids while we were visiting, is pictured in the foreground.

Little Lyford Lodge is tucked just above First Little Lyford Pond, in the shadow of Indian Mountain. In the foreground, the bunkhouse, which housed three mothers and a pack of kids while we were visiting.

Twenty years ago, when I hiked from Monson to Mount Katahdin on the 100-Mile Wilderness section of the Appalachian Trail, virtually all of the surrounding land (and much of the trail as well) was privately owned, mostly by paper companies.

AMC’s purchase of Little Lyford Lodge in 2003 was the first step in the organization’s “Maine Woods Initiative,” an ambitious project aimed at conserving land in the 100-mile Wilderness region, east of Moosehead Lake. Since the early 2000s, the organization, working in collaboration with others, has conserved almost 80,000 acres through a combination of direct ownership and conservation easements. Now, a corridor of preserved land extends all the way to Baxter State Park, and further east, thanks to recent designation of the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument.

AMC also has developed an extensive network of trails that connect its three lodges along with a private lodge, West Branch Pond Camps, so that guests can ski or hike from lodge-to-lodge. The third lodge, Medawisla, currently is closed for renovation, but will reopen in summer 2017.

Little Lyford Lodge, where guests relax, and enjoy a full dinner and breakfast. The Lodge also provides a trail lunch to all guests. During our visit, temperatures were seasonable, but mild by mid-winter North Woods standards. Visitors wearing hats and mittens took full advantage of porch rocking chairs.

Little Lyford Lodge, where guests enjoy dinner and breakfast. The Lodge also provides a trail lunch to all guests. During our visit, temperatures were seasonable but mild by mid-winter  standards in these parts. Visitors wearing hats and mittens took full advantage of porch rocking chairs.

The organization’s initiative also has served to reinvigorate the tradition of the Maine sporting camp that once drew thousands of “sports” each year to the North Woods. Although you can still find 40 or traditional camps through the Maine Sporting Camp Association, many more have closed since their heyday in the first part of the 20th century, as the automobile and the airplane, along with busy work and family schedules, have changed the way people vacation.

With its huge membership base, the AMC has a ready pool of potential guests eager to get off the grid and away from the glow of the screen.  In the long run, I suspect that Maine’s many family-owned sporting camps will benefit from AMC’s marketing efforts, as a new generation discovers the North Woods.

We were snug in the Gray Ghost cabin, equipped with a wood stove and propane lights. Each cabin has its own outhouse, or visitors can use the fully-equipped central bathhouse, which includes a wood-fired sauna! Hence its nickname, the Spa.

At Little Lyford, we slept soundly in the Gray Ghost cabin, equipped with a wood stove and propane lights. Each cabin has its own outhouse, or visitors can use the central bathhouse, which includes a wood-fired sauna.  Hence its nickname, the Spa.

After our night at Little Lyford, we set out for Gorman Chairback Lodge, skiing on a “green” (easy) trail along the Pleasant River. We considered a side trip by snowshoe to Gulf Hagas, the largest gorge in Maine, but decided we best conserve our energy for the ski to Gorman. The skiing was irregularly groomed, but not difficult, and easily accomplished by anyone with some cross-country experience (or an enthusiastic novice).

After eight miles, we burst out of the woods at Gorman Chairback, just in time for a cup of fresh Carrabassett Coffee. The cook was busy preparing the evening’s dinner, an authentic chicken Cordon Bleu. Gorman is noted as the best of AMC for its cuisine and also offers beer and wine for sale.

Gorman Chairback Lodge, on the shores of Long Pond. In the summer and fall, you can drive to the Lodge, but winter access is by ski or snowshoe, or, for those who wish to, snowmobile taxi.

Gorman Chairback Lodge, on the shores of Long Pond, was extensively renovated several years ago and reopened in 2011. The lodge includes rustic and modern cabins as well as  bunkhouse accommodations.

After our night in the Library, and a breakfast of eggs, bacon, and blueberry muffins, we packed up our trail lunches and set off on a bluebird sky day. My only complaint was that our stay was too short.

We skied out on the trail across Long Pond, then into the woods for several miles until arriving back at the Winter Parking Lot.

We skied out on the trail across Long Pond, with Chairback Ridge in the background, then into the woods for several miles until arriving back at the Winter Parking Lot.

On the long drive home from Greenville, I did my usual plotting: this summer, a return to Little Lyford for the hike to Gulf Hagas? Next winter, a ski into Medawisla and a couple of nights at West Branch Pond? Not exactly “California Dreamin,'” but if I need to escape the cold, I know where to find the sauna.

Sources and resources

More information about AMC Lodges here.

You could spend a well-lived life visiting Maine’s many sporting camps listed at the Maine Sporting Camps Association.  I have especially fond memories of visits to Bulldog Camps, and look forward to checking out many others.

For information on the history and economic impact of AMC’s Maine Woods Initiative, see this Baseline Report written by economist David Vail (a former professor of mine!). Also, I’ll point out here that in the North Woods, thousands and thousands of acres remain in private ownership for logging, snowmobiling and other pursuits.  Economic activity and conservation are not incompatible and often work well in tandem.

For more information on another hut-to-hut ski adventure, see my post on Maine Huts and Trails:

Celebrating the new year in hut heaven: Champagne toasts at Maine Huts & Trails

The AMC also operates a system of hut-to-hut hiking in the White Mountains, although most are closed in the winter (with the exception of Lonesome Lake and Carter Notch Huts). Here, my post about a visit to Madison Hut:

Presidential aspirations: You can’t always get what you want

Celebrating the new year in hut heaven: Champagne toasts at Maine Huts & Trails

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We set off for Poplar Stream Hut on a perfect December afternoon.

We set off for Poplar Hut on a perfect winter afternoon.

At Poplar Hut, nestled on a hill in Maine’s Carrabassett Valley, the staff sets out the champagne glasses at 9:30 p.m.  By 10 p.m., most guests will be fast asleep in their bunks, worn out by an afternoon of snowshoeing, cross-country skiing or hiking into the hut.

But the party continues for those dedicated to the stroke of midnight. They sip on beer, wine or softer beverages, while pursuing wild games of Bananagrams and Settlers of Catan.  Completing jigsaw puzzle becomes a communal activity, and then everyone settles into the comfy couches by the fireplace or in the upstairs reading room, waiting for the clock to strike midnight.

The countdown begins. At midnight, instead of watching the ball drop in Times Square, we cheer as a crew member ceremoniously lowers an old ball of a wasp nest tied to the ceiling.

This is my first overnight visit to Maine Huts & Trails, and I’m wondering what took me so long.

Two feet of fresh snow made for nice soft cross-country ski conditions, with no scary ice to contend with when skiing downhill.

Two feet of fresh snow made for nice soft cross-country ski conditions, with no scary ice to contend with when skiing downhill. Shown here is the junction at the Narrow Gauge Trail (a popular rail trail, to the left) where it intersects with the Maine Hut Trail to Stratton Brook Hut. The trail climbs about 1,000 feet in 4.7 miles from the Airport Trailhead, making for a good workout. A shorter 3.1 trail with less elevation gain departs from the Stratton Brook/Route 27 trailhead.

Maine Huts & Trails operates four “huts”  — really more like backcountry lodges  — in western Maine which people can visit by foot, ski, bike, or snowshoe.  Poplar Hut opened in 2008, followed by Flagstaff Hut on Flagstaff Lake (2009), Grand Falls Hut on the Dead River (2010), and, in 2012, Stratton Brook Hut, located on a knoll with views of the Bigelow Range and Sugarloaf Mountain.  The non-profit organization eventually hopes to build a dozen huts stretching across Maine’s woods up to the Moosehead Lake area.  Theoretically, skiers, hikers, and bikers can travel from hut to hut, which some do, while others visit for a night or two.  In the winter, the huts also make a great lunch destination for a cross-country ski or snowshoeing day trip.

Previously, I had visited cozy Flagstaff Hut for lunch on a summer boat excursion with Jeff Hinman of Flagstaff Lake Scenic Boat Cruises. But I’d been under the mistaken impression that an overnight hut trip in winter was too much for kids to handle, and thus had put off a winter visit for several years.

When we finally set out on our cross-country skis, we traveled under near-perfect circumstances: two feet of snow had dropped on the Valley that week, making for soft if imperfectly groomed skiing trails (with post-dump grooming still in process). The temperature, by winter standards, was mild, around 30 degrees. The three-mile ski up to Poplar (gaining 500 feet of elevation) was definitely challenging, but we had all afternoon to get there, and the prospect of a bunk nap before dinner.

Dinner was a slow-cooked roast beef and assorted side dishes, along with a delicious roasted veggie-lentil loaf for vegan/vegetarians (Note: backcountry huts of all kinds always make amazing vegetarian meals; you can count on at least one crew member being a serious vegetarian cook). The  chef had piled the champagne cupcakes with way too much frosting and I ate every bit of it (knowing I would need the energy for the next day).

New Year's cheer at Stratton Brook Hut (I got so caught up in my puzzle-building that forgot to take pictures while staying at Poplar).

New Year’s cheer at Stratton Brook Hut (I got so caught up in my puzzle-building at Poplar that I forgot to take pictures there). Behind the fire place are several cozy chairs and a couch.

At Poplar Hut, as I talked to folks gathered around the tables, I was struck by the variety of guests there: the creaky and the lithe, the young, old, and middle-aged, and both novice and experienced backcountry travelers. Because the huts offer many choices and routes, they make backcountry experiences accessible to all kinds of people.  Yes, you do have to work a bit to get here, but most of the huts aren’t that far from roads, even though they feel remote. We skied into Poplar on the 3-mile Maine Hut Trail, but could have snowshoed the same route, or on a shorter, 1-mile(-ish) trail from another trailhead. Visitors do need to bring a sleeping bag, but you can have your gear shuttled from hut to hut, as we did on Day 2 and 3 of our visit.

On New Year’s Day, we enjoyed a breakfast of buckwheat pancakes, eggs, and bacon and good coffee before setting out for Stratton Brook Hut, about seven miles away. Because of  the heavy snow, we ended backtracking on the Maine Trail Hut to the Narrow Gauge Trail, where we eventually headed up another Maine Hut Trail to Stratton Brook Hut. Other trails follow different routes, but would have been difficult to navigate in 24 inches of unbroken snow.

We arrived at Stratton Brook Hut around 2 p.m. I was ready to move in.  Stratton Brook is built on a little piece of heaven situated between Sugarloaf Mountain and the Bigelow Range. Great views abound. (I definitely want to look into the volunteer caretaker program when I am retired).

Hut view

View of the Bigelow Range from inside Stratton Brook Hut.

That night, the crew cooked up a feast of balsamic chicken, plus the requisite dessert: a berry cobbler that tasted summer fresh.

Sunrise at Stratton Brook Hut.

Sunrise at Stratton Brook Hut.

At Stratton Brook, we had our own little bunk room and slept well, rising in time  to get out for views of the winter sunrise.

For breakfast, we enjoyed more pancakes and eggs and conversation with a group from New Brunswick, Canada.  The night before, we had embarked on another puzzle project and could not leave without finishing. But we were in no hurry — the sled took our gear, we enjoyed our coffee and puzzle-building, and then geared up for the ski downhill to the Airport Trailhead.

View of the Bigelow Range from the trail that leads to Stratton Brook Hut.

One last view of the Bigelow Range before skiing down the trail. Like many, I am not a confident cross-country skier on descents, but found the 1000-foot gradual descent manageable with my ski-pole-between-the-legs braking technique. If conditions were icy, we probably would have chosen snowshoes.

So, now I’m a member of Maine Huts, and already making my plans for next year. Or maybe sooner!

Sources and resources

For a family, staying at Maine Huts & Trails is a splurge, as the per-person price adds up. However, I consider the huts a good value: the $130 weekend/holiday rate per night includes three meals, with a 50% discount for kids ($65, including teens).  One day of ski tickets at nearby Sugarloaf Mountain, with no meals or lodging, would cost about the same for our family of three. I don’t mean to pit one experience against the other, just to show that the huts are reasonably priced for the experience they offer. Sunday-to-Thursday rates are about 30% less, and members get a 10% discount, plus a variety of other discounts, including some steep “flash-sale” discounts.

Searching for the lost village of Punkintown

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In the 1920s, unmarried sisters Mary and Almira Payne reportedly were the last residents of Eliot’s Punkintown, a small community of 10 or so families who once lived near the outlet of York Pond. One town history relates Mary had no legs below her knees and travelled by walking “like a toad.”

Today, the remnants of Punkintown (also spelled as Punkin Town) lie deep within 500 acres of conserved forest land between Route 236 in Eliot and Route 91 in York.   Punkintown Road, now a trail,  still connects these two routes.  Exploring this trail and others that lace through these woods,  I wonder how often Mary walked on Punkintown Road to York or South Berwick.  She never married, but had five children. Did she have a common-law marriage? What became of her children? And what happened to the home where she lived? Mary died in 1927 and Almira in 1936.  One account reports that both are buried in the woods near the site of their home.

On my adventures in Punkintown, I have not found that site, or other cellar holes and foundations that once supported homes, but the woods are full of historical clues, like small quarry ponds, cemeteries, and old stone walls.

Punkintown wasn’t truly a town, but might have been a world unto itself, especially once snow piled up on the narrow road. Today, hikers and mountain bikers can get a feel for that isolation when exploring the trails that loop around this forest full of wonders like witch hazel and sassafras trees, and views of Bartlett Mills and York Ponds.

This hand-drawn map shows the direct route to P-town. Explorers will definitely want to walk or ride the loop the goes to Bartlett Mill Pond and past the Plaisted Cemetery.

This hand-drawn map shows the direct route to Punkintown. Explorers will definitely want to walk or ride the trail that loops by the shore of Bartlett Mills Pond and past the Plaisted cemetery. Post a comment if you would like me to share a more specific description of the northerly, more complicated loop (yellow line).

One history of Eliot suggests that the area was settled by Major Charles Frost, who set up a grist mill in the York Pond area in the 1770s. Today, the outlet from York Pond meanders down a channel reinforced with stone walls that look like someone built them 200 years ago, or yesterday. The grist mill may have the reason a few families settled here in the early 1800s.

But was Punkintown as isolated and hardscrabble as these deep woods suggest today? Near the shore of Bartlett Mills Pond, the Plaisted cemetery includes a family monument, a sign that the family was fairly well off, at least by 19th century rural Maine standards.

The Plaisted family cemetery, near Bartlett Mills Pond. Patriarch Ebenezer Plaisted, the patr

The Plaisted family cemetery, near Bartlett Mills Pond. Patriarch Ebenezer Plaisted, born in 1793, lived a long life, dying at age 88 in 1881. The Plaisteds married into the Emery and Payne families, all of whose local histories date to the 17th century.

Also, a photo of the Plaisted family house, labeled as built before 1800, looks sizable and quite respectable.  This house reportedly burned down in 1916, but thus far, I have not located a foundation cellar hole (it’s possible that it was filled in, or swallowed up by the newer homes on the private land beyond the York Pond outlet stream).

Ebenezer Plaisted House

This photo, which I found online, was published in Margaret A. Elliot’s book ” Eliot”, published in 2005 by Arcadia Publishing for the Eliot Historical Society.

The Plaisted family settled in southern York County in the 17th century. Roger Plaisted, a likely ancestor to Ebenezer, was killed by Indians in South Berwick in October of 1675, along with his son, Roger. So Ebenezer was likely well-established in the area, with many relatives and community ties.

No one knows for sure how the community came by the name, Punkintown. Some say it was because the people here raised and sold lots of pumpkins.

People lived in Punkintown from the early 1800s until Mary and Almira passed away, with one history suggested that the community died out after a tuberculosis epidemic in the 1920s. However, I question that assertion, since tuberculosis was as common as mud before antibiotics and didn’t “wipe out” towns in a year or two, as infected people tended to succumb slowly, over many years).  Edward Vetter’s account tells us that locals recall that an eccentric woman named Emma Payne who may have lived in Punkintown as late as the 1960s. Emma reportedly came to town occasionally to sell vegetables, some of which may have been pilfered from other gardens or farms along the route.

The trail to Punkintown begins on Punkintown Road,  by the Brixham Dance Works on Route 236 (across from Marshwood High School). Visitors should park at the top of the hill, off to the right in a small space that holds two or three cars. Here there is a confusing three-way intersection. Walkers or mountain bikers should turn head to the right and up a small hill.

Park at the top of the hill crass from this somewhat confusing sing. , which

Park at the top of the hill directly across from this somewhat confusing sign, which designates house numbers on the road and has nothing to do with the trail.

After ascending the first part of the hill, you will reach an intersection. Here, the old Punkintown Road — and the most direct route to the York Pond area — continues straight up the hill.

The right fork (somewhat straight ahead) takes hikers on the old Punkintown Road. The left fork takes visitors to Rocky Hills and a variety of other trails, including a loop back to Punkintown Road. However, you need an adventurous spirit to explore in here, as trails are not marked (although it is hard to get truly deeply lost). Upon request, I will post more specific directions to this route, which includes a stop at small quarry pond.

After climbing up to and then along a ridge, the trail descends gently towards the headwaters of York Pond, where an outlet flows towards Bartlett Mill Pond.

Bridge over the outlet from York Pond. Note the beautiful stone work, which lines this stream and may date to the early 19th century. Here, Punkintown Road continues on private land posted against trespassing. Several houses are visible, and the road links up with Route 91 in York.

Exploring further, a side trail on the north side of the road leads to the shore of beautiful York Pond, a hidden gem in the forest. Behind the pond, the glacial drumlin, Swazey’s Hill, rises above the pond.  You can circle the hill on a flat trail, or climb up and over it on a trail that eventually lands back on Punkintown Road, where you would turn right to head back.  At one intersection, a small white arrow directs you to stay right. Pretty easy.

December view of York Pond.

December view of York Pond.

But there’s so much more to explore.  To find the Plaisted cemetery, you take another trail on the south side of Punkintown Road. The trail intersects the road in two places (see map above). If you are facing the York Pond outlet stream (looking toward the private land), the trail is to your right.  After about 50 yards of walking, you will find the cemetery and Bartlett Mill Pond.  If you continue along the woods trail that runs near the pond shore, it will wind back to Punkintown Road, which is basically the spine for these trails and others in the forest.

We turned off the main PUnkin town road to the a side trial dtoarards BArlemt mill, and e

The single-track trail along the shore of Bartlett Mill Pond, headings towards the Plaisted cemetery.

This beautiful swath of forest features many other trails to explore on foot or mountain bike, all of them suitable for what I call intermediate middle-aged lady mountain biking (woods roads, some single track, and some mud, with a few logs that I walk my bike over).

I’ve lived in the Seacoast region for over 20 years and until this fall, when I first visited Punkintown on a Great Works Land Trust walk, I didn’t even know that this patch of protected land existed. On my explorations since then, I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. I’ll definitely come back again for more adventures in Punkintown.

Bartlett Mills Pond.

Bartlett Mill Pond.

Sources and resources

I welcome any corrections or additions to this piece.

The Great Works Land Trust has been working with other entities for 20 years to conserve the land in this area.  Today, this 500-acre forest includes parcels owned by conserved by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife, the Nature Conservancy, and the Town of Eliot.

Much of the information about Punkintown comes from Edward Vetter’s A Pictorial Tour of Eliot: Historical Markers, Plaques and Landmarks in Eliot, Maine, edited by Esther Morrow. Vetter’s account is based the memories of Frank Parsons, who relayed his memories of Punkintown in 1987, when he was 87.

Margaret A. Elliot’s Eliot, published in 2005 for the Eliot Historical Society, also includes some information on Punkintown.

Lives lived, and lost, at the Kittery Town Forest

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Kittery purchased the land for the Town Forest, once known as the Poor Farm, in 1820. An 1852 Auditors report (the oldest I've uncovered) mentions the Almshouse. Since the original purchase included a house and a barn, the town was probably using it as an almshouse for many years prior to 1852.

Back in 1820, in Kittery, Maine, the town purchased the original 13-acre plot that became the Town Farm or Poor Farm.

Sometimes when I walk in Kittery’s 72-acre Town Forest, I wonder what became of Ella Hill and her girl Annie. From 1891 to about 1897, Ella and Annie lived here at the Town Farm, or Poor Farm. In 1891, the town spent $2 to move Ella and two children to the almshouse. She arrived with an infant son, Fred, in her arms. He died on May 22 that year and probably dwells in an unmarked grave nearby.

Ella had another son, John, born around 1878 when she was 20.  The 1880 census tells us that she and two-year-old John lived with Rachael Fernald and worked as a domestic servant. Ella’s father, John Hill, a farmer, died in 1880, so she perhaps went to live with and work at the Fernalds  to keep body and soul together for herself and her baby.  No husband is mentioned in the scant records I’ve found that document Ella’s life.  After the census, young John disappears, so perhaps Ella lost two children.

At the almshouse, Ella and little Annie probably ate supper each night with Adelaide and Charles Leach. By that time, Adelaide, about 60 years old, and Charles, her 49-year-old younger brother, had been residents, or “inmates,” of the almshouse for more than 2o years. Perhaps they provided comfort to Ella when her baby died. Perhaps she comforted them when William Leach, possibly their brother or another relative, died there on January 23, 1892, at age 64.

More inmate deaths followed during Ella’s stay. In 1892, Mary Taylor, age 45 died, followed by John Ricker, age 80, and Abigail Clements, age 79. Not long after, 88-year-old Joseph Parsons arrived. Perhaps Ella helped care for these elders to earn her keep.

Ella and Annie stayed on until around 1897, when they disappear from the Kittery town reports. Did Ella marry? Did she find employment in one of Kittery’s big hotels, or somewhere else?

Town records are silent on her eventual fate. They tell us a bit more about Adelaide and Charles, both of whom lived most of their lives at the Town Farm, and died there. On January 22, 1901, Adelaide died. Although the town report listed her name as a farm inmate for more than 30 years, nobody caught the mistake that named her “Annabelle Leach” in the vital statistics.  Charles died 15 years later, on September 20, 1916.

What the records don’t reveal is why the Leaches, an old Kittery family with roots dating to the 1600s, landed at the almshouse. They arrived, it seems, with other members of the Leach family, including their parents, Ebenezer and Iza, some time between 1861 and 1871; a town report from 1861-62 records expenses for “partial support” of 30-year-old Adelaide Leach at a private home. The 1860 census tells us that Ebenezer Leach was a fisherman, as was his son Charles. Various town reports  list the “Leach property” as under town ownership, valued at $500 in 1906 (but not part of the Town Farm, valued at $2,000). What fate befell the Leach family, so that they lost their land and perhaps their livelihoods, and ended up living out their days at the Town Farm? Why did two young adults — Adelaide and Charles – stay at the farm?

The blue-marked Quimby Trail offers a loop walk of about 3 miles through the forest.

The blue-marked Quimby Trail offers a loop walk of about 3 miles through the forest.

Today, the Town Forest is one of the Kittery’s under-the-radar resources, one in which I’ve enjoyed walking, running, and biking since the 1990s. Over the past 20 years, the forest surrounding the town land has shrunk, as housing developments have sprung up on all sides, but the Town Forest remains a great place to wander, and to wonder, about the people who once called this place home, including a good number who still remain, buried somewhere in unmarked graves.

In 19th century New England, the “poor farm” was a well-established institution where some residents worked at farm chores to pay their keep. However, evidence in Kittery’s town reports suggests that taxpayers generally supported the five to eight residents who lived there, with the town paying a salary to a “superintendent,” and bills for flour, wood, food, and other necessities, and even for hiring nearby farmers like William Haley and Samuel Norton to do the mowing and other heavy chores. Although it’s possible that “inmates” took care of a small garden, most were too old to do the hard physical labor of farm work.

The 19th century almshouse has a reputation as a misery-filled place where all manner of humanity was thrown together, elderly widows and young children mixed in with vagrants and drunkards. But some poor farms, especially in rural New England, were more convivial and communal – places of shelter and community where residents might play cards together or just enjoy the benefits of human companionship. They were more like small old-age homes, where elderly residents who had no family or whose family wouldn’t or couldn’t care for them lived out their last days.

The forest offers no dramatic vistas, but lots of old stone walls, a family cemetery, and other remains of the past that speak to lives lived and lost here.

The Town Forest offers no dramatic vistas, but lots of old stone walls, two family cemeteries, and other remains of the past that speak to lives lived and lost here. Here in the Haley Family Cemetery, walkers will find Captain Haley’s 1864 gravestone embedded in the ground, surrounded by other unmarked or illegible stones.

I suspect that the Kittery Town Farm almshouse had a community-like feel to it.  Adelaide and Charles Leach surely enjoyed the company of little Annie Hill, who lived at the farm until she was about seven. 

In 1820, Kittery purchased the original 13 acres for the farm, along with a house and a barn, for $325. Later, Captain John R. Haley left 59 surrounding acres to the town. It’s unclear when the town began using the house and land as its “poor farm,” but a town report from 1852 mentions the almshouse, so I suspect the land was purchased specifically to serve as a home for the poor. Some sources that discuss the Pepperrell family note that one of the Sparhawk brothers of Loyalist William Pepperrell ended up living at the almshouse (and the timing, around the 1820s, sounds about right, as a Sparhawk born in the 1750s or 60s would have been an elder by the 1820s).

Town records suggest that the town began to move away from using the almshouse as the shelter of last resort in the 1920s, when the number of residents declined to two and then to one, Mary Gunnison, an elderly woman who lived there with caretakers Mr. and Mrs. Charles Hall until around 1922.  

Later, the town rented the farm for a $175 a year.  In many years, maintenance expenses outweighed the rental income, which probably led to the decision to demolish the almshouse in 1961.  Many Kittery residents today still remember riding the school bus past the almshouse on Haley Road.

Evidence of porcupine activity in the forest; the porkies love the bark of the many hemlock trees.

Evidence of porcupine activity in the forest; the porkies love the bark of the many hemlock trees.

Somewhere in this forest is a lost and unmarked pauper’s burial plot that probably holds the Leaches and the other souls who died while living at the Town Farm. When the snow melts, I’ll continue to look for it, as I wander, and wonder, about these people, their stories, and why they landed at the poor farm.

Sources and resources

The Town Forest, at 77 Haley Road, runs between Haley and Lewis Roads, with parking areas on both ends. At the southern end, the former town pound, where stray livestock was once corralled, is an interesting feature.

I welcome any comments or additional information that might fill out this story about the Town Farm.

The Town Farm now features one main loop trail, about 3 miles long, known as the Quimby Trail, named for the late Conrad Quimby, a retired newspaper publisher who called Kittery home for many years, and as Chair of the Conservation Commission spearheaded the creation of walking trails in the Town Forest. Numerous herd trails also thread through the forest.  Hunters regularly tramp in these woods in the fall, and more adventurous walkers can plunge deep into the forest without fear of getting hopelessly lost (especially now that residential development surrounds the forest).

Walkers will find the Haley Family Cemetery, on the Quimby Trail, soon after it bears left (from the Haley Road entrance). The Lewis Family Cemetery is located at the Haley Road entrance, next to the Town Pound.

The Rice Library holds town reports dating to 1874. More reports (but not all) can be found in Maine’s Digital Commons. The earliest report I found was dated 1852.

Some general information about the 19th century poor farm comes from David Wagner’s excellent study of six New England town farms and almshouses: The Poorhouse: America’s Forgotten Institution,  New York; Rowman and Littlefield, 2005.

Information on the 1820 purchase is from the March 3, 2002 Portsmouth Herald article by Amy Wallace, “Kittery Hunts for Town Forest Solution,” by Amy Wallace.

Hunting is permitted in the Town Forest, so I recommend wearing hunter orange Monday to Saturday from November 1 to mid-December and avoiding the forest altogether at dusk and dawn, when hunters are most active. No hunting on Sundays.

 

Hiking the Baldface Circle Trail, plus twenty

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The guidebook describes the Baldface Circle Trail as “a strenuous trip not to be underestimated,” but I didn’t remember it as so.

I first hiked this 9.8 mile loop with my husband back in 1997 in early November. Then, I had great fun pulling myself up the steep rock ledges. The 1.2-mile walk from the summit of 3570-foot South Baldface over the open ridge to 3610-foot North Baldface was exhilarating.  On the final leg, we walked a couple of miles through a tunnel of golden beech trees.

At the day’s end, I must have been tired. But I was in my mid-30s, and “exhausted” doesn’t stand out in my mind as an adjective to describe that day.

The trail up to South Baldface looks Presidential, minus the weekend crowds.

The trail up to South Baldface, in the Evans Notch border area of Maine and New Hampshire,  looks Presidential, minus the weekend crowds.  In total, the 9.8-mile Baldface Circle Trail features about four miles of wide-open walking.

Fast-forward almost 20 years. I’d had my eye on a return to Baldfaces, this time to introduce my son to the trail. Over the next few years, I want to show him the “greatest hits of New England” hiking before he is off to college.  And he’s more or less game, as long as the hiking happens in moderation.

For several years now, we have made an annual pilgrimage to a small cabin  at Cold River Camps, just across the street from the Baldface trailhead, and have thoroughly explored Evans Notch, on the Maine-New Hampshire border. I love this valley because it lies within striking distance for a day trip, but feels remote and off the beaten bath. When hordes flock to Franconia and Pinkham Notches on gorgeous fall weekends, Evans Notch remains quiet. We see hikers on the trail, but rarely more than a few parties.

This year, when a September Sunday promised a perfect day for hiking, we rose early and headed north. When we arrived at the Baldface parking area on Route 113 around 9:30 a.m., plenty of spaces remained available.

The Baldface Circle hike begins with a 2.5 mile steady uphill walk on an old logging road to the base of the ledges, which begin just past the Baldface Shelter, a popular destination for an easy overnight. We met many hikers coming down the trail, including a family with young kids, most of whom had spent the night at the shelter or the tent platforms. By the time we reached the shelter, however, it had emptied out, and we enjoyed a snack there before taking on the ledges.

The ledges were much as I recalled them – straight up. We gained about 1,000 feet of elevation in just over a half-mile, pulling ourselves up and over rocks and boulders, and walking on granite slabs at what feel like a 60% grade (but was probably was more like 20%).

An interesting cairn -- more sculpture than trail marker -- pointed us to up the trail to South Baldface, and to the peak of North Baldface, in the distance.

An interesting cairn — more sculpture than trail marker — pointed us to up the trail to South Baldface, and to the peak of North Baldface, in the distance.

As I did years ago, I felt exhilarated to reach  South Baldface. But I also felt totally wasted, and was grateful for the sunny warmth that allowed me to stretch out on the rocks and recover.  I could hear my husband talking to another party of hikers.  After a few minutes he asked if I was okay.

“I will be,” I told him. “I just need a few minutes.”

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Back in 1936, South Baldface and the other mountains along the Maine-New Hampshire border were eyed for development as a ski resort. The Borderline Resort proposed by the U.S. Forest Service and the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) called for the creation of hike-up/ski-down trails on South Baldface and other mountains, including Mount Meader, and West Royce, East Royce, and Speckled Mountains, with a phase 2 to include, on the opposite side of the Notch, Caribou, Elizabeth, Haystack, Peabody, and Pickett Henry Mountains. AMC proposed that its seasonal Cold River Camps could serve as the base area for a mega-resort that eventually would encompass all of the mountains in the Notch.

It’s almost unfathomable to imagine this wild valley (much of it now designated as federal wilderness) as home to a sprawling resort.  Today, in the winter, one off-season cabin at Cold River Camps is the only place to stay for many miles.

The Borderline Resort plan never gained momentum, probably in part due to extensive damage in the forest caused by Great New England Hurricane of 1938. Also, maybe somebody realized that promoting skiing on the icy ledges of South Baldface wasn’t the greatest idea.

Thank goodness – I enjoy skiing, but I’m glad that this scenic valley isn’t so different from when a handful of hardy families settled here in the early 1800s.  Yes, a road exists now (built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s), and electricity runs to the few homes along the road, but as in bygone days, I’m guessing that the few year-round residents hunker down during winter storms, when the valley feels truly remote.  (The upper end of Route 113 closes to automobiles in winter and becomes part of a popular snowmobile route).

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Instead of ski lifts and slopes, we had great views of North Baldface and the other peaks in Evans Notch. To the northwest (but not pictured) we had views of Mount Washington, and, to the northeast, the long blue stretch of Kezar Lake.

After a long rest on South Baldface, we continued hiking on the open ridge towards North Baldface. The mountains stretched all around us.

When we reached the junction for the Bicknell Ridge Trail, which reduces the hike by a third of a mile, I was more than game for the shortcut. Besides, as we picked our way down the granite and the rocks, we found that Bicknell Ridge also offers plenty of great views.

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Views of the big Whites from the open ridge near North Baldface. I love the maroon ground cover.

Eventually, we dropped down to a green tunnel of beech trees. The last two miles felt like a trudge, and I wondered if I would hike the Baldface Circle Trail again. Perhaps twice in a lifetime is enough.

I had plenty of time to think as I pounded down the trail. Did I still have it in me to hike the Appalachian Trail?  How long will my hiking career last?  What will take its place when hiking is no longer an option? Oh sure, I have many years left, but some day….

Thinking about these questions might seem depressing, but I’m a glass half-full kind of person.  If this was my final trip to Baldface, I wanted to soak it in and appreciate the green forest, even if I couldn’t wait to get back to the car. At the very least, I had to come back for  a dip in the Emerald  Pool, a swimming hole tucked off the trail about a half-mile from the road.

They say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I’m not sure if that’s true for me on the Baldface Circle Trail.  But by mid-week, when my collapse on South Baldface was fading to a distant memory, I was looking at the weather and planning my next hike, to 4000-footer Mount Waumbek.

Sources and resources

“Borderline.” Maine Cancelled Ski Areas. New England Ski History. Updated November 26, 2012.

Trail distances, elevation and other information from the White Mountain Guide, 28th edition (2007), published by the Appalachian Mountain Club.  A newer edition now available, and recommended.

For more on hikes in Evans Notch:

My post, “Five great family hikes in Maine,” includes a short review of the wonderful Blueberry Mountain hike in Evans Notch.

The Basin Trail is another great trail at the northern end of the notch, in the Wild River Valley; see “In the Wild River Valley, a November blizzard, deep snow, and a man who preservers to save his cat.”

And for another tale about a nearby Maine ski area, big dreams and failed schemes, see “White Elephant in a Green Valley.”

Finally, if you want to read more about the hike on Mount Waumbek, see my post, “Gray jays, great day: A fall hike on Mount Waumbek.”