DOT plans to close 6 rest areas in Maine

For weary motorists in need of a place to rest their eyes and families looking for a place to enjoy a bagged lunch, the rest areas that dot the roadsides are a welcome sight.

Built in the 1950s and ’60s, these rest areas are often found near a stream or they have a view that provides visitors with a little something extra.

Over the years, however, the traditional uses of these facilities have vastly changed, so much so that the Department of Transportation has closed many of the facilities, and continues to do so.

Some of these rest areas have become gathering places for sex or drugs.

“Use your imagination and people go beyond that,” Bob LaRoche, the DOT’s supervisor of landscape architecture, said Thursday. “I keep shaking my head and say, ‘No, this is Maine, that can’t happen,’ but it does.” Someone in earlier years even blew up a privy with dynamite, he recalled.

The effort behind the closings also allows the state to concentrate on fewer facilities.

“What we’re trying to do is get our inventory down to be able to maintain the balance at a higher level of service,” LaRoche said. It costs between $4,000 and $5,000 a year to maintain each rest area, and that cost doesn’t include repairs from acts of vandalism.

LaRoche said that in their heyday, there were more than 150 rest areas in the state, whereas today there are only about 60.

“Originally they were built to allow safe places for travelers to pull over and rest,” LaRoche said Thursday. Over time, some of these facilities were no longer needed because there were other places where travelers could rest. For example, the state plans to close the Wetstone Brook picnic area in Brownville because the town constructed a town office and parking area nearby where travelers can stop and rest their eyes, if needed, he said.

“It makes our facility rather redundant,” LaRoche said.

The Brownville facility is one of six that will be closed soon by the DOT unless the towns where they are located take over the ownership and maintenance. Rather than close the facility, Brownville selectmen this week authorized Town Manager Sophia Wilson to begin the process of taking over the ownership. The facility gets a lot of family use, especially during the summer and fall months, Wilson said.

LaRoche said the other facilities scheduled to be closed are in Norway, Woodstock, Avon, Wilton and Dixfield. The state is willing to transfer the land at no cost to the towns provided the public use continues, he said. If or when the facility no longer serves the public, the land must return to the state, he said.