In Maine’s North Woods, thousands of miles of roads – privately owned, but open for public use – cut across millions of acres of remote undeveloped forest.

Although the maximum speed on these unpaved logging roads is 45 mph, state law-enforcement agencies have no authority to enforce the speed limit.

Early last Thursday, a van driven by a Honduran forestry worker was hurtling down Cyr Road at an estimated 70 mph before it skidded off a rain-slicked bridge and into the Allagash Wilderness Waterway. Fourteen migrant workers from Honduras and Guatemala drowned.

The accident, the worst in Maine history, has raised safety concerns about the lightly regulated transportation network within the North Woods, America’s largest undeveloped region east of the Rockies.

“It’s a frontier,” said Jym St. Pierre, chairman of Citizens to Protect the Allagash. “In effect, there are no speed limits on the private logging roads.”

Logging was once a seasonal industry in Maine, with trees cut in the winter and hauled down rivers to mills in the spring. Over the decades, more and more roads were built to increase the land’s productive use.

Keeping unauthorized drivers off the burgeoning number of roads proved impossible, particularly given Maine’s long tradition of public access to private land, St. Pierre said.

Eventually, two dozen large land owners banded together to create North Maine Woods, a group that manages public access to 3.5 million forest acres in unincorporated sections of northern and western Maine.

Today, sportsmen and other recreational visitors entering the area receive a brochure, sign a use permit, and pay a fee to North Maine Woods, which maintains more than 400 public campsites, said Executive Director Al Cowperthwaite.

Speed limits and other notices are posted only at the discretion of individual property owners, but frequent users of the roads say signs and compliance are rare.

“They suggest 45, but everyone violates that,” said George Smith, executive director of the Maine Sportsman’s Alliance.

“The guys who drive those trucks are very good at it, but they also have to be cowboys,” said St. Pierre, who also serves as executive director of Restore: The Maine Woods.

Near John’s Bridge, where the 15-passenger van plunged into the Allagash on Thursday, a speed limit was posted, according to Seven Islands Land Co., which manages the property.

The accident site, though 90 miles from the nearest paved road, would have been well-known to the van’s driver, Juan Turcios-Matomoros. Authorities have blamed excessive speed for the accident and sent the driver’s blood for a toxicologic test.

The wide thoroughfare where the crash occurred, built for oversized logging trucks, often carries vehicles traveling at high speeds, said Mark Latti, spokesman for the Maine Warden Service.

“Some of these roads are basically dirt highways, where 55-60 mph is certainly not excessive for the conditions,” Latti said.

Cowperthwaite said that several years have passed since the last fatal accident on a private road in the North Woods. But very little data is available on the roads or the number of accidents on them, largely because there is so little regulation.

The state Department of Transportation has no oversight authority. The Land Use Regulation Commission sets standards for the design of private roads, but in most cases property owners can build new roads without permits, according to Catherine Carroll, the commission’s executive director.

Maine Warden Service agents sometimes stop hunters and fishermen and occasionally charge one with drunken driving, Latti said. But agents are not allowed to issue speeding tickets.

Some landowners have hired local sheriffs to enforce speed limits, Cowperthwaite said, but in other areas there is no enforcement at all.