740-mile canoe trip revival eyed Organizers believe old route connecting Adirondacks to Maine still exists

FORT KENT – It could be called the Appalachian Trail for canoeists, except that its development is still in the making and won’t be concluded by the end of this year’s canoeing season. One canoeist, however, already has made the trip.

The Northern Forest Canoe Trail meanders for 740 miles from the small community of Old Forge where the Moose River flows in northwestern New York state. It travels through four states, using 14 rivers and several major watersheds, and numerous portages before it ends on the St. John River, just below the confluence with the Fish River at Fort Kent.

A bit more than half the trail is located in Maine, starting in south-central Maine near Umbagog Lake, striking several small lakes, rivers and streams as it winds its way north and east to Flagstaff Lake, Moose River to Moosehead Lake, up the West Branch to Chesuncook, Churchill, and Churchill lakes to the Allagash River, and the St. John River to Fort Kent.

Donnie Mullen, a 29-year-old Outward Bound instructor from Northport, was the first paddler, and the only one known to have gone end-to-end on the 55-day trip that started on May 1, 2000. He arrived in Fort Kent on June 24.

Mullen, a North Forest Canoe Trail newsletter said, paddled a 16-foot wood-canvas canoe he made for the trip. In the newsletter, Mullen called the trip “an adventure, both marvelous and frustrating.”

For centuries before Europeans arrived in North America, American Indians had a well-established network of travel routes in the Northeast, several of them on rivers.

Organizers believe the “old routes” still exist connecting the Adirondacks with northern Maine. The routes connect every major drainage in the Northeast. Organizers consider it “a living reminder of the history and heritage of the northern forest area, and its people.”

Today, according to information from Northern Forest Canoe Trail, the 740-mile trek is not a wilderness trip. While there are many wild areas, the trail also passes through very developed regions.

The group does not want to change the lay of the land where the trail passes. All they attempt is minor clearing of some of the portages along the route.

One organizer said believers look at the trip as a “journey through history.”

The idea of reviving the old canoe routes has been brewing for some time, according to Julie Isbill, a National Park Service employee working on the Rivers and Trails Program.

“It’s gone into a higher gear in the last year or two,” she said in an interview. “We are trying to develop active groups along sections of the trails to develop the trail.

“I’m quite sure that the Rangeley area group has the only section of the trail that has been dedicated,” she said. “The Fort Kent group is coming along very well.”

Committees also are working in New Hampshire, Vermont and New York, and one is starting in Jackman, according to Isbill.

“It’s hard to get people interested,” the NPS staffer admitted.

The volunteer groups provide local information and review of information, and the creation of maps for the trail going through their section.

Isbill conducted a meeting last week with the Fort Kent group, by telephone hookup from Brunswick. The groups are creating maps and making signs for the trip.

The trail-ending sign is one of the projects the Fort Kent group is working on. It would be a kiosklike sign with the history of the trail and the Fort Kent area.

The Fort Kent group has been going since the fall of 2000. Their area of concern, according to Isbill, is from Gero Island on Chesuncook Lake to Fort Kent, about 120 miles.

The 13-person committee includes people from Fort Kent to Allagash and has nearly completed compilation of the text, route and graphics for the Gero Island to Fort Kent section of the trail. They also have acquired landowner permission for the trail.

“This is one of those little projects that is a feel-good type of thing that we can do, and it does not cost a lot of money,” Fort Kent Town Manager Donald Guimond, a member of the local committee, said Monday. “It’s a project that needs a lot of work by people, but not a lot of maintenance or tax money.

“When we found out about this project, we thought it was kind of unique,” the municipal official said. “Since it dealt with the outdoors and our rivers, things we pride ourselves in, we called to get involved.”

Since then, the group has been working for the Fort Kent to Gero Island section to be one of the earlier projects to be approved.

“We could be the second section in Maine to be approved,” he said.

Guimond thinks the Northern Forest Canoe Trail is one of those trips that people can do over a period of time, instead of all at once.