By Irwin Gratz
MPBN news story
The Allagash Wilderness Waterway is now being called “complete.”
The Allagash Wilderness Waterway Foundation says most of the land along the Allagash was acquired by Maine in 1966. Now, nearly 50 years later, the foundation says a 40-acre site, also called the Lock Dam Lot, was privately purchased last month and donated to the state of Maine.
The protected waterway runs for 92 miles from Telos Dam in Penobscot County northward to West Twin Brook in Aroostook.
Bob McIntosh, president of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway Foundation, says it worked with the Lock Dam Preservation organization and got money from the Butler Conservation fund to buy the land from Katahdin Timberlands.
McIntosh says the 40 acres once played an important role in development of Maine’s timber industry.
“The powers that be built the Lock Dam complex, separating the flow of water from Chamberlain into Eagle Lake,” he says. “And, as a result, and with Telos cut and Telos Dam improvements, they were able to divert the flow of the Allagash.”
It meant logs that once could only go north could be floated south toward mills as far away as Bangor.
McIntosh says today, the land is important for canoeists and kayakers who want to move between Eagle and Chamberlain lakes.
