Photo, journal exhibit showcases North Woods

PORTLAND – There are stories in the North Woods, and an exhibit at the Maine Historical Society hopes to tell them using photographs and journal entries from a century ago to depict the changes in Maine’s forests.

The exhibit, “Umbazooksus and Beyond: the Maine Woods Remembered” opens Jan. 28 and lasts through June 5.

The exhibit – which curators gave the unusual name because it makes people wonder – includes five 100-year-old accounts from different parts of Maine, from the Allagash River to Katahdin to the ponds around Moosehead Lake.

Henry Withee of Rockport tells in his diary of how he and a friend from Massachusetts carried a canoe only long enough to impress locals.

Neil and Margaret Allen documented their 1909 honeymoon to Lobster Lake in a diary with amusing accounts, including how they nicknamed their canoe Nella after all the citronella they used to repel insects.

“It sounded like she had a great time,” said exhibit curator Candace Kane. “She was so excited to catch a fish.”

The exhibit also offers accounts from sportsmen of the past that are filled more with sightings of wildlife and fish than adventures gone awry.

On a trip to Ragged Lake and Roach Pond before 1904, John Dunn recorded in his journal a two-week tally of seeing “5 caribou, 73 deer, 2 moose.”

“He’s a sportsman. His account is a very different thing,” Kane said.

Such notes are no different from those that fill camp logbooks today.

Campers who vacation and live in the woods often record wildlife they’ve seen, the daily weather and water temperatures, and meals caught and cooked.

“Instead of a narrative, theirs was a day book, more of a log,” Kane said.

A 1930 trip up Katahdin that was photographed by Herbert and Emmie Whitney, documented by their friend, Charlotte Millett of Gorham, showed how the well-dressed traveled in style and fashion.

Even the true sportsmen in the early 1900s, from the upper classes, came to the Maine woods in blazers, collared shirts and vests, Kane said.