Task force takes a look at Allagash Members of wilderness waterway panel get history lesson

Standing on the edge of a bog hidden within the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, members of a state panel listened intently as Gary Pelletier explained the significance of an old, two-story farmhouse gradually succumbing to nature’s forces.

The house, Pelletier said, was built around 1865 by one of the region’s early settlers. In the ensuing decades, it changed hands and was put to use as livestock barns, a sporting camp and eventually a schoolhouse.

Three nearby cabins were used until the 1980s. Then the state allowed the cabins – and the history lessons associated with them – to disappear into the wilderness, Pelletier said.

Few who paddle the Allagash River likely know the old Taylor Camps farmstead, as the property is known, is even there, much less stop to explore.

But members of the task force on the Allagash Wilderness Waterway spent more than an hour Sunday following Pelletier, a local expert in Allagash history, through thickets and over downed trees as part of a two-day trip to the waterway.

The trip was a chance for the panelists, most of whom have spent considerable time in the Allagash, to become reacquainted with the waterway’s natural beauty. It was also an opportunity to learn more about local history and culture, and how those tie into frustration among local residents about how the waterway is managed.

“It simply reinforced what has been said before about the importance of really getting a handle on the history and making it available, not letting it slip [away] unnoticed with time,” Don Nicoll, the group’s chairman, said after returning to Fort Kent on Monday. “Too much of that history is gone.”

The Allagash Wilderness Waterway Working Group was formed by Gov. John Baldacci this spring after an all-out brawl in the Legislature over vehicle access to the river, day use of the waterway by local residents, and the fate of several bridges largely used by the timber industry.

Rather than settle those long-standing disputes, the group was asked to recommend how to run the waterway in a more efficient and less controversial way. The panel held two public hearings in Aroostook County on Saturday and Monday to hear residents’ ideas.

But the group spent all of Sunday and much of Monday on the waterway.

Driving in through Allagash, the panelists visited Michaud Farm, Ramsey Ledges and Cunliffe campsites. They visited the purported grave site of a former river driver who died more than a century ago, and explored several former homestead sites.

The group also walked part of the latest flash point in the decades-old feud over the Allagash – the Old Michaud Farm Road. While walking the road, which was recently reopened by work crews that included two lawmakers, the task force members were passed by a father and son in a pickup truck who were going to fly-fish at Cunliffe.

“That’s what it is all about,” said Rep. Troy Jackson as the fishermen went on their way.

Jackson, an Allagash Democrat, and Sen. John Martin, D-Eagle Lake, had permission from the landowner when they helped reopen the road in July, but had not consulted or notified anyone with the state Department of Conservation, which oversees the waterway. Their actions infuriated some conservationists who wanted the road to remain closed. A state investigation is still pending.

On Sunday, the panelists’ first stop after launching from Michaud Farm was Taylor Camps, an old homestead about two miles south of Allagash Falls that was inhabited from the mid-1800s through the 1980s. The state allowed the property to disintegrate after it was vacated as part of a long-standing policy of allowing developed sites to “return to wilderness.”

Pelletier, a retired warden whose family roots in the Allagash date back several generations, demonstrated his plan to rehabilitate and restore two log cabins that date from the early 20th century.

Group members compared Pelletier to a child in a candy store as he excitedly marched the dozen people throughout the overgrown property, all the while spewing interesting facts and humorous stories about the former inhabitants. Pelletier believes other Allagash users also would be interested in learning about the site’s past with the help of signs and historical exhibits.

Pelletier’s walk-through of Taylor Camps was a popular fireside topic later Sunday evening at the Allagash Falls campsite, where the group spent the night, and again Monday morning.

Don Hudson, who heads the Chewonki Foundation, a conservation and outdoor education group, said he had floated by Taylor Camps many times during Allagash trips but never stopped. He predicted that many paddlers would stop to learn more about local history.

Martin, who is one of the fiercest defenders of the interests of Allagash-area residents, suggested that the state erect signs similar to those at Route 11 rest stops that highlight local history.

“There is clearly so much more than merely canoeing the river that is possible,” said Martin, a member of the panel who accompanied the group Sunday.

After rising early from their tents and eating a hearty breakfast, the crew of panelists and several others reloaded their canoes Monday morning and began a leisurely paddle downstream toward the town of Allagash.

The weather was nearly ideal, with temperatures in the 60s and a light breeze, as the group floated through the northern tip of the 92-mile wilderness waterway. Throughout their time on the water, the group members encountered more bald eagles than they did other paddlers.

Navigating his canoe through a shallow section of the Allagash, panelist Brownie Carson said he believes the waterway’s “wilderness character” and its history and culture are compatible.

But Carson, who has become one of the linchpins of Maine’s environmental community in his capacity as executive director the Natural Resources Council of Maine, said he remains concerned that opening up areas to more vehicles will spoil the wild side of the waterway.

“We do still see a river with real wild character, and that is certainly worth protecting,” Carson said.

Anthony Hourihan, a member of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway Working Group and regional manager of Irving Woodlands, swims Sunday evening near Allagash Falls.