Timber, Sporting, and Exploitation of the Moosehead Lake Region
IV. Early Sportsmen's Guidebooks and Maps
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Maine Wilderness Transformed Timber, Sporting, and Exploitation of the Moosehead Lake Region IV. Early Sportsmen's Guidebooks and Maps |
    
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Before the Civil War, a few travelers -- notably Henry David Thoreau and James Russell Lowell -- sought the "wilderness experience" of northern Maine. The trickle became a flood after 1870 as entrepreneurs began to promote the Moosehead Lake region for hunting and fishing. Their market constituted middle and upper classes from Portland, Boston, and New York, who sought both recreation and relief from urban pollution. | |
| A) Way and Hubbard: The First Guidebooks |
John Way's book [41], with its map [34], was the first
guide for sportsmen to Moosehead Lake and the surrounding region.
Directed at the Boston tourist, Way wrote his work to coincide with the
1874 opening of the second Kineo House, illustrated in the map's vignette.
The new house represented a significant increase in the scale of tourism at
Mt. Kineo, supported by the extension of the North American and
European Railway (later Bangor & Aroostook) to Guilford. Way
seems to have based his map largely on Charles Haven's ca.1870 map of
Moosehead Lake [40]. Way's work was copied by Lucius Hubbard, whose first book appeared in 1879 [43], complete with a fold-out map [35]. Although the clean printing makes Hubbard's map look different, it is heavily based on Way's map. Indeed, the copy of Way's map shown here was in fact owned by Hubbard: each of his pencil annotations on Way's map can be matched with details on his own work. Hubbard also added many Native place names to his map -- derived from St. Francis, Penobscot, and Malecite Indians -- and provided a list of them, with their meanings, at the back of his book. |
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34 John M. Way, Jr. Map of MOOSEHEAD LAKE and the Headwaters of the PENOBSCOT & ST. JOHN RIVERS Boston: [Bradford and Anthony], 1874 Lithograph with pencil annotations by Lucius L. Hubbard, 50.2 x 42.9 cm Maine Historical Society |
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35 Lucius L. Hubbard MAP OF MOOSEHEAD LAKE AND NORTHERN MAINE Cambridge, Mass., 1879 Lithograph, 61.0 x 50.0 cm Osher Collection |
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| B) Moorehead's Archaeological Survey of Maine |
Even as he continued to publish his guide books, Lucius Hubbard
extended the coverage of his maps to encompass the St. John and
Aroostook valleys. He first produced a larger map of northern Maine in
1899 [36], published separately for $1, or $1.50 canvas-backed. Hubbard's larger map was used by Warren K Moorehead -- director of the R. S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology, Andover, Mass. -- during his archaeological survey of Maine (1912-18). Moorehead's primary companion when traveling around Moosehead Lake was Henry E. Capen, son of Aaron Capen, Jr. [see 4]. The map displayed was annotated by Moorehead to show his routes along the Allagash (1912, yellow), St. John (1914, red), and Mattawaumkeag and Piscataquis (1915, blue): "Early in June 1914, eleven of us in six, twenty foot White canoes left Moosehead Lake and started for Pittston Farms. Here we entered the real wilderness and for over four hundred miles, to Meductic a little above Fredericton, we moved steadily down the magnificent river." [Moorehead, In the Maine Woods (1916)]Moorehead's reports were full of references to the landscape of the region before the rivers were dammed and timber was big: "Mr. Marks was fortunate in being able to examine the [Chesuncook] territory before the great dams were built, and he has given me some particulars concerning the extent of this site." |
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36 Lucius L. Hubbard Map of NORTHERN MAINE Cambridge, Mass., 1899 Lithograph with pencil annotations by Warren K. Moorehead, 81.8 x 78.7 cm Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology |
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| C) Later Sportsmen's Guidebooks and Maps |
Following the success of Way's and Hubbard's works, other regular
travelers to Moosehead Lake and northern Maine also published
guidebooks. They did not, however, follow the same format. Thomas
Sedgwick Steele made two canoe trips with the intention of documenting
the region photographically [52]. He displayed his photo-graphs
in large exhibitions in New York, and reproduced them in his books
[49, 50]. His first trip, in 1879, follows a route similar to Henry
David Thoreau's in 1857. Indeed, the map accompanying Steele's first
book, has been annotated with elements from Thoreau's writing; for
example, it shows Thoreau's "Moose Grounds" at Northeast Carry,
located at the top of Moosehead Lake [37]. The map itself was
prepared by the New York publisher Charles A. J. Farrar, but does not
seem to have been copied from either Hubbard's or Way's maps. Farrar published numerous guidebooks to northern Maine and the White Mountains, including his own [51], all of which were well illustrated. Farrar's Guide was available in larger, hard-cover and smaller, paperback formats with foldout maps in each. The guide presents very detailed descriptions of each locality. The map [38] is an update, especially with respect to the railroads, of Steele's map. The promotion of the upper Kennebec Valley, with its connections to Moosehead Lake, is tied to the construction and opening in 1907 of the Somerset Railway Company, a division of Maine Central Railroad. This new line ran from Oakland, just north of Waterville, to Somerset Junction and the Canadian Pacific Railway, and then to the Kineo Station Wharf at Birch Point (now Rockwood); from the wharf, passengers could transfer to the Coburn Steamboat lines. This was a more direct route to Mount Kineo Hotel from Portland, Boston, and points south, and it soon reduced the importance of Greenville and the Junction. Maine Central Railroad completed its venture up the Kennebec Valley with the purchase and upgrading of the Mount Kineo Hotel in 1911. The new route was advertised intensively, with a map on the stock offering [see 11] and a separately published map for the information of sportsmen [39]. |
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37 W. R. Curtis MAP OF MOOSEHEAD LAKE From Thomas Sedgwick Steele, Canoe and Camera (New York, 1880) Lithograph, 59.9 x 47.0 cm Hamilton Collection |
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38 Capt. Charles A. J. Farrar Marshall M. Tidd Farrar's Map of Northern Maine From Farrar's Illustrated Guide Book to Moosehead Lake (Boston, 1889) Lithograph, 61.5 x 48.5 cm Hamilton Collection |
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39 F. Snow Clifton S. Humphreys Sportsmen's Map of UPPER KENNEBEC MOOSEHEAD LAKE REGION Oakland: Somerset Railway Company, 1907 Lithograph, 96.8 x 41.0 cm Maine State Archives |
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| D) Related Ephemera | ||
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40 MAP OF MOOSEHEAD LAKE, MAINE Boston: Cha[rle]s H. Havens, ca. 1870 Facsimile, 22.2 x 14.0 cm Maine Historical Society
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52a Thomas Segwick Steele [ Wilsons' East Outlet from dock] Photograph, 1878 10.8 x 16.8 cm Hamilton Collection
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 Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic
EducationUniversity of Southern Maine |
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