Allagash Wilderness Waterway
Allagash Waterway, Autumn 2012. Blueeyedgabriel, Wickicommons.
For thousands of years before European settlement, Wabanaki peoples traveled the waterways connected to the Allagash River by canoe, using them as routes for travel, trade, and fishing. Loggers, guides, and even Henry David Thoreau would later follow many of the same routes. By the mid-20th century, however, centuries of colonization and industrial development had altered indigenous life in the region, while logging, dams, roads, and development pressures threatened to permanently reshape one of the country’s great wilderness canoe routes.
But in 1966, after years of debate and advocacy over a variety of proposals for what should happen to the region, Mainers voted to establish the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, a 92-mile protected area linking lakes, rivers, ponds, and streams from Telos Lake at the southern tip to East Twin Brook at its norther terminus. Four years later, the canoe route gained more protection. With the help of Maine’s Senator Ed Muskie, the waterway became the first state-administered component of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.
Today, the effort to protect the waterway is fulfilling its promise, offering paddlers the opportunity to encounter bald eagles and loons, fish for trout, make short day trips or weeklong ones, glide over serene waters in the shadow of mountains or white-knuckle it through whitewater rapids. Through programs such as Youth on the Allagash and a traditional birch bark canoe-building project led by the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, the waterway also serves as a living classroom where stewardship and cultural traditions are passed to the next generation.
Author: Stephanie Bouchard
