The North Maine Woods is the northern geographic area of the state of Maine in the United States. The thinly populated region is overseen by a combination of private individual and private industrial owners and state government agencies, and is divided into 155 unincorporated townships within the NMW management area. There are no towns or paved roads.
The region covers more than of forest land bordered by Canada to the west and north and by the early 20th century transportation corridors of the Canadian Pacific International Railway of Maine to the south and the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad Ashland branch to the east. It includes western Aroostook and northern Somerset, Penobscot, and Piscataquis counties. Much of the woods are currently owned by timber corporations, including Seven Islands Land Company, Plum Creek, Maibec, Orion Timberlands and J. D. Irving. Ownership changes hands quite frequently and is often difficult to determine.
Its main products are timber for pulp and lumber, and the area is used for hunting and outdoor recreation.
Included within its boundaries are two wild rivers of the Northeastern United States: the Saint John and the Allagash. The North Maine Woods completely surrounds the Allagash Wilderness Waterway.
History
Early European settlement of New England and Atlantic Canada was along the Atlantic coast. Some of these newcomers focused on fishing and shipbuilding while others cleared forests for conversion to farmland. Trees from the cleared forests provided lumber for homes, barns, and ships to support the fishing industry and European trade. As the coastal forests were cleared, settlers moved inland along the major rivers from the Hudson River north to the Saint Lawrence River. Early interior settlers spent the short summers growing food and the long winters cutting trees. Logs in excess of those needed to build farming structures could be floated downstream and sold to sawmills. Cities like Bangor, Maine, on the Penobscot River and Saint John, New Brunswick, on the Saint John River developed at the head of navigation where sawmills converted logs to lumber and shipyards converted lumber to ships.
Prior to invention of railroads, industrial investment in these cities depended upon anticipated forest resources available to be floated down river. Competition for upper Saint John River watershed forests developed in the 1830s when Bangor interests purchased land containing headwaters lakes and altered Chamberlain Lake to drain into the Penobscot River. This competition was resolved by the Webster–Ashburton Treaty giving Maine control of what became the North Maine Woods.
Flora and Fauna
The North Maine Woods are part of the New England-Acadian forests ecoregion. They are predominantly forestland consisting of mixed northern hardwoods and conifers, much of it artificially planted after harvesting by the various landowners. The major tree species are balsam fir, black spruce, and northern white cedar with smaller numbers of white spruce, yellow birch, paper birch, quaking aspen, eastern white pine, speckled alder, eastern hemlock, and black ash.
The area is also home to white-tailed deer, moose, black bears, bobcat, coyotes, red fox, fisher, otter, mink, marten, weasel, beavers, porcupine, muskrat, red squirrel, and snowshoe hare.
Common birds include olive-sided flycatcher, white-throated sparrow, wood duck, common yellowthroat, spotted sandpiper, red-eyed vireo, American robin, common loon, belted kingfisher, bufflehead, least flycatcher, yellow-billed cuckoo, wood thrush, common merganser, black-capped chickadee, Canada jay, ruffed grouse, and spruce grouse.
There are official hunting seasons for the grouse, deer and bears, with a state-run lottery system for awarding moose-hunting licences. Char including squaretail, togue, and isolated populations of blueback trout are the best known fish of the rivers and lakes. The Muskellunge is a non-native fish that has spread throughout the Saint Johns River watershed. Black fly, mosquito, deer fly, and midge populations can be significant from late spring through early autumn. The Maine North Woods are also home to the endangered Canada lynx, bald eagle and the Furbish lousewort, a rare plant that is found only in the Saint John River Valley. Animals which have disappeared from the woods during European settlement include caribou and gray wolf.