February 13, 2025
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North Woods roads ‘coming along’

FORT KENT – Two weeks after some of the worst flooding ever to hit the region, access to privately owned roads in the North Maine Woods is beginning to return to normal.

“Things are coming along very well,” Al Cowperthwaite, executive director of North Maine Woods Inc., said Friday. “The weather has been ideal.”

The weather was far from ideal earlier this month when a record rainfall landed on top of the record-breaking snowpack covering northern Maine. The result in the heavily forested North Maine Woods was 88 separate incidents of road, bridge and culvert damage from Allagash to Oxbow.

North Maine Woods Inc. is an organization of landowners, including individuals and corporations, and state natural resource agencies. Its mission is to address the problems of managing about 3.5 million acres of forestland in northwestern Maine known as the North Maine Woods, including the Allagash Wilderness Waterway.

“The landowners were mostly concerned about access for fire control,” Cowperthwaite said. “So they’ve been in there fixing damage to make the roads passable.”

According to the North Maine Woods Inc. Web site, roads were affected most severely in townships east and west of Oxbow Township extending west to the Allagash River and north to the American Realty Road. North of the American Realty Road, damage extended west to the St. John River, east to Route 11 and from there all the way north toward Estcourt, St. Francis and Fort Kent. Water crossings at Umsaskis and Henderson Brook on the Allagash River are still under water, and indications are the bridges may not be passable for some time. Although roads in the southern parts of the North Maine Woods were not damaged as badly, the causeway across the west end of Seboomook Lake is impassable.

The networks of roads leading in and out of the North Maine Woods provide access to working wood-harvesting operations and numerous recreational venues.

“These roads are extremely important to the northern Maine economy,” Cowperthwaite said. “This area is the wood basket of Maine.”

While media outlets from around the country were broadcasting images of Fort Kent and the surrounding St. John Valley as the Fish River overflowed its banks into several towns and villages, Cowperthwaite said it took another week before anyone on the ground got a good look at the North Maine Woods.

“The damage was much greater than we had thought,” he said. “It was a week before the water receded enough for the landowners to get out there and see just what the problems were.”

These problems include washed out roads at West Twin Brook, Michaud Farm, Estcourt, Chase Brook, the American Realty Road, Rocky Brook and St. Francis.

Bridges sustained damage at Pratt Stream, Dead Brook, Henderson, Schedule Brook, Rocky Brook and Bell Brook.

According to Cowperthwaite, as of Friday morning work was progressing on the American Realty Road, and he anticipated it being open for traffic over the weekend.

“This is an important road for sportsmen,” he said.

In addition, he said the bridge over the Allagash River at Umsaskis Lake is now passable.

The Land Use Regulatory Commission has jurisdiction over construction within the North Maine Woods, and Cowperthwaite said the standards for bridges are strict.

“But no one anticipated a 100-year flood like this one,” he said. “These bridges are built for normal spring runoff.”

Landowners and local contractors are working nearly around the clock to open the remaining roads, and Cowperthwaite recommends anyone traveling into the woods first check the North Maine Woods Web site at www.northmainewoods.org for updates on road conditions.

“Changes are taking place every day,” he said. “I suspect soon most of the through roads will be passable.”

The exceptions to that are the Henderson Bridge over the Allagash River and access into the Deboulie Mountain area, which for now is restricted to the St. Francis gate.

Still, it’s largely good news for the people who work and play in the north.

Among the landowners working to get the roads back into shape is Huber Resources Corp. which owns and manages a half-million acres of northern Maine woodlands, including managing lands for the Nature Conservancy.

“We are still assessing the situation,” Kenny Fergusson, Huber’s Maine woodland forester, said Friday. “Some of the land is still under snow, and we want it to dry out before we go in.”

Despite the accessibility impact, Fergusson said, company operations have not suffered much.

“It might have pushed us back a week or so,” he said. “In our northwest area we are not working until June anyway.”

Cowperthwaite wants to get the word out that, while travelers need to use caution and common sense when driving on the private roads, there are still plenty of places open for traffic.

“North Maine Woods is a nonprofit and operates off the fees it collects from users,” Cowperthwaite said. “We want people to know we are open for business.”

Much of the land base remained accessible throughout the flooding, and conditions south of the American Reality Road are as good as Cowperthwaite has ever seen them.

“The fish are biting,” he said. “The area is a great alternative for people who don’t want to drive long distances for a vacation.”

For road information, go to www.northmainewoods.org or call North Maine Woods, whose office is located at 92 Main St., Ashland, at 435-6213.


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