Old days on Allagash waterway recalled

Al right, so spring got a little setback in the form of yucky precipitation. Like all small things, this too will pass. If you don’t start making plans for the better weather coming, it’s going to come and go before you know it, and you’ll be sitting there wondering why it passed you by.

So get busy thinking about that special trip you’ve wanted to take. I’ll even help you out a bit by planting a seed – Allagash.

I’ve taken a few trips in the waterway and each was better than the one before – and they all were wonderful. My only regret is that I’ll never have the chance at the kind of trip that adventurers had less than 50 years ago. The Allagash Wilderness Waterway wasn’t even designated such until 1966, and it wasn’t until 1970 that it was designated a National Wild and Scenic River. Heck, by that time it was practically a Sunday afternoon stroll compared to what it used to be.

No, I’m not old enough to have seen it in its wilder glory, but I recently got my hands on a 1952 copy of the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad Co.’s publication “In the Maine Woods.” The publicity department of the railroad published an annual issue to “portray the unexcelled recreational advantages in northern Maine along the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad lines. It is published in keeping with the railroad’s policy of public service in the territory it serves.”

In the 1952 issue, there was a fascinating article on the Allagash canoe trip, as it was called, written by Chief Henry Red Eagle, an Algonquin Indian who graduated from Greenville schools and went on to tour this country and Europe with such groups as the Wild Wild West Show, Barnum & Bailey, Buffalo Bill and 101 Ranch. In 1911-1912, he toured “the British Isles with his own troupe of Indians and lectured on Indian life and customs,” the introduction to the article states. Chief Red Eagle was a prolific writer with more than 500 short stories and novelettes and scores of magazine and newspaper articles under his belt.

I found his article “The Thunderous Wondrous Allagash” fascinating because of the contrasts it pointed out between the 1950s and the generation before. But what is more interesting is being able to contrast the Allagash of today with that of the past and see how soft we’ve all become.

Chief Red Eagle pointed out the contrast he perceived 50 years ago in comparing a ’50s modern trip with that of an earlier era when he said that, “…for the days when the intrepid sportsman or hunter went into the woods with a slab of bacon, a bag of flour and a handful of salt have been relegated into the limbo of a decadent era along with the birch-bark canoe and the muzzle-loading gun.”

“The well-organized canoe trip of today can be made with comparative comfort, good food, adequate shelter and other contributing factors to make it a woods excursion that is full of fun and adventure for the whole family.”

The trip of the ’50s, by the way, was a two-week undertaking at minimum. The “luxury” portion of the trip was that you could take a train to Greenville.

Later, the rail line went to Fort Kent where the river trip ended, so sportsmen could do the entire trip by train and canoe, called at the time “going around the horn.”

In 1919, the Allagash trip began in Greenville. Sportsmen had to go up the 40 miles of Moosehead Lake to Northeast Carry. They would then make a 2-mile portage to the West Branch of the Penobscot River and go downstream 27 miles to Chesuncook Lake and across the head of the lake to Umbazookskus meadows, then down Umbazookskus Stream to Umbazookskus Lake to a 1.6-mile portage to Mud Pond, then into Chamberlain Lake.

By the ’50s, Great Northern Paper Co. had established a road network and it was possible to drive from Greenville to Chesuncook Lake, where a sport could hop the mail boat for a ride up to Umbazookskus Lake. (If my figuring is correct, that saved about 75 miles of paddling from Greenville.)

In his telling of the ’50s -era Allagash trip, Chief Red Eagle says the campsites at Round Pond are the first “public” ones you’ll encounter after leaving Chesuncook Lake. (Today there are 40 sites between the southern end of Chamberlain and Round Pond.)

Today the 90-plus-mile river trip begins at the Thoroughfare on Chamberlain Lake, but shorter excursions are available, since there are 14 different access of points along the waterway. No longer is it difficult to have access to the Allagash River, despite the 1966 bond to “develop the maximum wilderness character” of the waterway, and despite the 1970 federal designation as a National Wild and Scenic River.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that it won’t take another 100 years for the wilderness character the state is supposed to preserve to disappear. In just the past 50 years, the character of the Allagash River trip has changed dramatically. Developing more access points so more people can drive to the water’s edge, to me, doesn’t seem to be an act of preservation.

But we’ll see. A suit making its way through Kennebec County Superior Court filed by the Natural Resources Council of Maine and a coalition of residents and conservation groups is challenging a decision by the state’s Land Use Regulation Commission to develop a boat launch near John’s Bridge on the waterway.

The question the court will have to answer is whether the waterway should be protected from such development, or whether the state should bow to political pressure and open up boat ramps at will, anywhere. Don’t laugh, there’s a bill floating around the State House that would permit the Department Inland Fisheries and Wildlife to build boat ramps on all Class 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7 lakes with little or no LURC oversight.

Kiss goodbye the thought of having a “wilderness experience.” Maybe it’s not too late to take up wake boarding. Maybe Round Pond’s Back Channel would be a fun place to start; it’s not far from an access point.

Jeff Strout’s column is published on Thursdays. He can be reached at 990-8202 or by e-mail at jstrout@bangordailynews.net.