UMAINE • April 21, 2023
Steve Bunker and I became good friends while at Bowdoin and shared many fishing and hunting adventures during 1956-1960. Two that stand out in my memory are the fishing trips we took in 1959 and 1960 to Eagle Lake in Piscataquis County. Back then there was no I-95 north from Brunswick nor were there any roads in Maine that we could take directly to the lakes at the head of the Allagash. Extensive cutting was underway in that area as far back as the 1830s. Henry David Thoreau visited Eagle Lake in July 1857. Edouard “King” Lacroix rebuilt the original dam at Churchill Depot at the outlet of Heron Lake in 1926. The road we traveled from Lac Frontiere was built by Lacroix in 1927 and was used by Helen Hamlin in 1937 to reach the then active village of Churchill Depot in order to teach school for three years. In 1966, the State of Maine established the Allagash Wilderness Waterway. I returned to Maine in the late 1960s. I came to realize what we experienced no longer existed. Then it was a true wilderness, accessible only with effort, and with the remnants of a mysterious abandoned railroad having been taken over by the woods once again. ~ Will Reid