SUN JOURNAL • July 12, 2020
It’s something of a miracle that nobody ever quite got around to draining a swampy section of the city known today as Garcelon Bog. Owned by the city and protected by the Androscoggin Land Trust, the area offers pleasant walking trails and a refuge for plants and wildlife that struggle to find a haven in urban environments. While people today may see the area as a preserve, for most of the city’s history it’s been eyed as a potentially lucrative source of fuel, an odiferous mess or a fine place for a highway. Somehow it survived anyway.