Maine State Parks
Photo: Aroostook State Park
With an influx of Scandinavian immigrants to Aroostook County in the late 1800s, by the 1930s, skiing had become a popular family activity and competitive sport in the region with many small towns making use of their hilly landscapes to host community ski areas. After state legislators created the State Park Commission in 1935, the people of Presque Isle got busy. They wanted to create a year-round park complete with downhill skiing and a ski jump, and what could be better than if that park could be the first state park?
With the help of local fundraisers and donations, the Presque Isle Merchants Association donated 100 acres of land around Quaggy Joe Mountain and Echo Lake in 1938, and in 1939, the state’s first state park – Aroostook State Park – opened.
Thanks to workers from the Works Progress Administration, the new state park had a 2,700-foot ski slope and a tow made with a potato sled. It didn’t, however, have a ski jump. Even without it, the park was a success. In the winter there was downhill skiing, a wooden toboggan chute, and warming huts, and in the summer, there was picnicking and camping and Echo Lake offered opportunities for swimming, boating, and fishing.
That mix of year-round recreational opportunities reflected exactly what the State Park Commission hoped to create across Maine – protected landscapes preserved not only for their beauty, but for people to enjoy.
Today, Maine’s 48 state parks preserve beaches, mountains, forests, lakes, and historic places across the state and continue to be beloved places where generation after generation of Mainers sit around campfires before crawling into tents, shine flashlights along damp fort corridors, and crouch beside tide pools searching for crabs and snails and sea stars.
