Jackman is a snowmobile town – has been for a long time and will be for even longer if locals have their way.

But during the past few years, the snow-loving town in northern Somerset County has begun to see the beauty in dirt. That’s because outdoors enthusiasts from throughout New England and beyond have begun showing up in numbers not just in winter but in spring, summer and fall.

The attraction: 300-plus miles of designated all-terrain vehicle trails in the Jackman-Moose River region that have been created in recent years. While area residents have been four-wheelin’ through the woods for decades, it took a statewide effort to create designated and mapped ATV trails to open the gates to outsiders.

“Now we can actually draw in tourists because before people didn’t know where they were going,” said Dave Jones, an officer in the Border Riders Sportsman Club, which caters to both snowmobile and ATV enthusiasts.

It’s a trend being seen throughout Maine these days.

Maine now has roughly 5,000 miles of designated ATV trails – more than all other New England states combined, and by a long shot.

While that’s still less than half the mileage devoted to snowmobiles, some say it may not be long before the snowmobile industry looks in its figurative rearview mirror and sees a four-wheeler challenging for the title of Maine’s most beloved vehicle after the pickup truck.

ATV enthusiasts have been adding about a thousand miles of trails a year recently, according to industry representatives. The number of ATVs registered in Maine more than doubled between 1998 and 2003, rising to 66,000-plus machines in the state that year.

And although ATV registrations have since leveled off, many people – even snowmobile industry leaders – predict it’s only a matter of time before ATVs pass snowmobiles in terms of their contribution to the Maine economy.

“If we continue to experience the success we have had, absolutely,” said Scott Ramsay, head of the Off-Road Vehicle Division at the Maine Department of Conservation. “It’s a longer season.”

A 2005 analysis by the University of Maine’s Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center estimated that ATVs contribute more than $200 million to Maine’s economy. That figure likely has risen thanks to the greatly expanded trail network.

A bumpy history

What makes this success so impressive is the fact that the history of ATVing in Maine sounds a lot like an ATV ride on backwoods trails in early spring: full of massive mud puddles, downed trees and trail washouts that would seem to slow down a rider, or, in this case, an entire industry.

A decade ago, ATVers as a whole were being branded as rough-riding hooligans because of a supposedly small but decidedly destructive bunch with little regard for landowner rights, much less environmental stewardship.

Landowners throughout Maine who were fed up with torn-up trails, damaged logging roads and muddied streams were posting their property to ATVs. Others were simply tired of hearing the noisy machines in places where they used to seek solitude in nature – a tension that still exists today.

As a result, ATV riders were finding it harder and harder to find places to enjoy their several-thousand-dollar machines.

State officials and lawmakers responded by passing a number of strict new ATV regulations, most notably a 2004 law that bucked the age-old Maine tradition of assumed public access to land unless posted otherwise. As a result, ATV riders today must get landowner permission first.

In the years since, ATV advocates have waged an uphill battle to change public perception of ATVers as disrespectful “yahoos” with some success.

Arguably the most effective approach was taking a page from Maine’s long-established and well-respected snowmobile industry.

Five years ago there were only about three dozen ATV clubs in Maine. Today there are 135 clubs with more being added all the time, said Dan Mitchell, executive director of the Alliance of Trail Vehicles of Maine, a statewide advocacy group for the sport.

“We’ve exploded in the past five years, and I think part of it is the lack of snow in the winter,” Mitchell said. “A lot of folks who snowmobile are also ATVers.”

Just like in the snowmobile industry, ATV club leaders serve a critical role as liaisons for local landowners. They work with property owners to create dedicated ATV trails, organize volunteer crews to perform trail maintenance, and are often the first to respond when a landowner lodges an ATV-related complaint.

It’s a system that has enabled snowmobilers to create more than 13,000 miles of trails in Maine, making the state the premier destination for sledders in the East. The DOC’s Ramsay and Mitchell believe the same can happen for ATVers, as long as the most visible riders are the responsible ones, not the comparatively few troublemakers.

“As landowners have more contact with clubs, and as clubs are responsive, we are certainly gaining more respect with landowners,” Ramsay said.

“Anyplace we have a club, the landowner issues have disappeared,” added Mitchell.

Problems persist

Of course, not all landowners agree that ATV-related problems have “disappeared” with the rise of the club system.

“I think in some cases it is better,” said Tom Doak, executive director of the Small Woodland Owners Association of Maine.

Praising Mitchell in particular, Doak added: “I know there are people trying hard to work on the issues. … But I continue to hear from landowners that say they continue to have problems.”

Doak and others attribute some of the persistent problems to the inevitable growing pains of a young industry. It’s hoped that some of those problems will work themselves out as the industry matures, especially as more out-of-state ATVers start bringing their money to Maine.

But perhaps the biggest problem – and one that distinguishes ATVing from snowmobiling – is the fact that it’s tough to hide evidence that a four-wheeler has passed through an area. When the snow is gone, so is almost all evidence of the season’s snowmobilers.

Not so with ATVs.

“They do leave a track, so even if they don’t do a lot of damage, it’s easy to see someone has been there,” Doak said.

And more than a handful of ATVers are still leaving tracks where they are not wanted.

Acadia National Park officials have been battling a scourge of illegal ATV riding in the park for several years. A small group of riders, believed to be mostly juveniles from local communities, have been blazing their own trails in the park, riding over small trees and damaging vegetation.

Last winter ATVers smashed walkway lights in a campground and knocked down a privacy wall near a restroom, causing an estimated $2,000 damage. ATV Maine and the Maine Recreational Motorsports Dealers’ Association each responded with $500 rewards for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the vandals.

While ATVers have established trails on many lands owned by Maine’s large private timber companies, several large landowners remain opposed to ATVs because of persistent damage problems and liability concerns. The problem is most acute in the Millinocket area, which is largely barren of official ATV trails.

“They have [illegal] access to our lands now, and we have to bear up the cost of it,” Bill Miller, vice president of Prentiss & Carlisle, which manages more than 1 million acres of timberland in Maine, recently told members of an ATV work group in Millinocket. “Why would we want to provide them with more at an additional expense?”

Bob Meyers, executive director of the Maine Snowmobile Association, said members of his organization and club leaders occasionally feel the heat from landowners when ATVers illegally use snowmobile trails.

Meyers credited the ATV clubs for making progress and agreed with Mitchell that where clubs exist there appear to be fewer landowner problems. But the ATV industry has grown so fast in Maine, Meyers said, that it lacks the time that the snowmobile industry had to establish relationships with landowners.

“Any kind of recreational user on someone else’s land, if they don’t respect the wishes of the landowner, there is going to be trouble,” Meyers said.

The ATV industry also lacks the political clout of the snowmobile lobby in the Legislature in part because of periodic, high-profile cases of riders damaging private property. Numerous people are killed on ATVs in Maine every year largely from high-speed crashes, a fact that is also true for snowmobiles.

Mitchell says the key is educating both riders and the general public that ATV trails can be established in a way that’s respectful of landowner rights, environmentally responsible and beneficial to local economies.

But he acknowledged that the burden of proof lies with the riders themselves.

“Words will never do it,” he said. “We have to demonstrate it, and we are.”

More trails on the way

With 5,000 miles of trails already established, industry leaders and state officials are well on their way to meeting their interim goal of 7,000 miles of ATV trails in Maine.

The state is working to open another 87 miles of multiple-use trails on former railroad beds that would connect Ellsworth to Down East communities. That will help Washington and Hancock counties continue to flourish as a regional hot spot for ATV trails.

While several dealers said ATV sales have slumped in recent years – possibly because of market saturation or the lingering effects over access disputes – they also believe the industry will continue to grow as more trails are added.

“The trail system is what made snowmobiling what it is, and trails are going to make ATVs” an economic force, said Jones, the Border Riders Sportsman Club member and co-owner of Jackman Powersports. “I think in the next couple of years we’ll see a real upswing, at least in this area.”

Tensions with landowners remain high in some areas, especially southern Maine. And there are serious obstacles – physical, political and psychological – that may prevent ATVs from ever achieving a trail network in Maine similar to snowmobiles, much less the same level of public acceptance.

Few will deny that things have changed for the four-wheeler.

“ATVs have gone from having absolutely nothing to being a significant nightmare for landowners to being a sport that is viable and growing,” Ramsay said.

BY THE NUMBERS

Here are the annual ATV registration figures in Maine, according to the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife:

1992-93 ? 21,447

1993-94 ? 22,390

1994-95 ? 23,857

1995-96 ? 24,324

1996-97 ? 27,270

1997-98 ? 28,834

1998-99 ? 33,854

1999-00 ? 40,279

2000-01 ? 44,796

2001-02 ? NA

2002-03 ? 59,857

2003-04 ? 66,023

2004-05 ? 62,774

2005-06 ? 62,268