Maine lakes are great

Rangeley has fly-fishing, moosehead offers moose -- and shops, restaurants are sprouting near both

By Christina Tree, Globe Correspondent

IF YOU GO . . . The Moosehead Lake Region Chamber of Commerce (207-695-2702 or 695-2026) is open daily through September. Web site: www.moosehead.net/ moose/chamber.html. The Rangeley Chamber of Commerce (800-MT-LAKES) is open Monday through Saturday. Web site: www.rangeleymaine .com. I recommend the following places to stay: In the Moosehead Lake Region: the Birches, where lodging includes yurts and cabin tents as well as lodge rooms and housekeeping cabins (800-825-WILD). The Greenville Inn (888-695-6000), Blair Hill Inn (888-918-8880), the Lodge at Moosehead (207-695-4400), Kineo House Inn (207-534-8812), the Devlin House (207-695-2229), and The Lakeview House (207-695-3543). The chamber maintains a long list of sporting camps and lodges. My favorite classic sporting camps are Little Lyford Camps (radio phone 207-280-0016) and West Branch Pond Camps (207-695-2561). In the Rangeley Inn & Motor Lodge (800-MOMENTS or 207-864-3341), rooms are divided between the main inn and motel-like units on Haley Pond. The Country Club Inn (207-864-3831) overlooks both Rangeley Lake and a public 18-hole golf course. All three meals are included in traditional sporting camps such as Bald Mountain Camps (207-864-3671) on Lake Mooselookmeguntic Lake, which offers horseback riding and tennis as well as a beach and boats. The Chamber of Commerce is a source of many housekeeping cottages and condos. Camping: Lily Bay State Park (207-695-2700), eight miles north of Greenville, and Rangeley Lake State Park (207-864-3858) offer camping and wilderness. Numerous campsites are scattered throughout both areas. Upcoming event: Aug. 12, from 10 a.m to 3 p.m., Sporting Heritage Day, Rangeley Town Park (on the lake) will include fly-fishing demonstrations, more than 50 of Carrie Stevens's flies and ``Flyrod'' Crosby's canoe paddle and fly rod. Directions: I suggest you split a week between Maine's Great Lakes. You might take the Maine Turnpike to Exit 12 and Route 4 north to Route 108 to Mexico, then Route 17 (one of my favorite roads anywhere) north through Byron (stop at Coos Canyon, a great picnic site, said to be the first place in America anyone panned for gold), on up to Height of Land, on down through Oquossoc into Rangeley. From Rangeley, take Route 4 south through Phillips (stop at Small's Falls along the way) and Route 149 to 234 to 201A (this is short and scenic) to Route 201A to Route 201, which follows the Kennebec River up through the Forks -- where I recommend stopping to sample white-water rafting (call Raft Maine: 800-723-8633). Continue on to Jackman and across Route 15 to Rockwood, on down to Greenville, and home. This is a spectacular foliage route. From Boston, it takes roughly four hours to reach Rangeley and five to drive directly to Greenville.

RANGELEY, Maine -- Color Maine blue. It's a greenish blue, not just of ocean and coastal bays but of the thousands of inland lakes and of mountains surrounding them.

Stand at the Height of Land on Route 17 south of Oquossoc and you will see what I mean. Below, four of the five major Rangeley lakes glisten blue-black, ringed by high mountains. Patterned only by sun and clouds, uninterrupted by any village or even a building, this green-blue sea of fir and hardwoods flows north and west to far horizons.

Your first impression of Moosehead, Maine's single largest lake, is similar. As Route 15 crests Indian Hill, you see for a moment what Henry David Thoreau described so well from this spot in 1853:

``A suitably wild looking sheet of water, sprinkled with low islands . . . covered with shaggy spruce and other wild wood.'' On a sunny day, color this view blue, too.

Rangeley Lake itself is only nine miles long, but ``The Rangeley Lakes Region'' includes 112 lakes and ponds, among them vast sheets of water with names like Mooselookmeguntic, Cupsuptic, and Aziscoos.

Moosehead is 40 miles long with some 400 miles of shore, and Greenville, the small lumbering town at its base, is the traditional jump-off point for Maine's legendary lake-pocked North Woods.

Rangeley and Greenville are actually some 150 miles apart as the roads run, and they access entirely different parts of Maine's ``working forest,'' a chunk of the state that's almost as big as Vermont and New Hampshire combined, most of it privately owned and managed since the 1820s.

Neither Rangeley nor Greenville is a resort town in the Cape Cod or coastal Maine sense, but they are Maine's two most popular ``wilderness'' hubs. A century ago, droves of summer visitors who had boarded trains in Manhattan, Boston, and Philadelphia stepped off in both towns, which offered large hotels and access to more via the trim steamboats that plied the lakes.

This gilded era can still be savored in the middle of both towns. In Rangeley, a former bank is now the Rangeley Lakes Region Historical Society (open daily except Sundays in summer), papered with photographs and filled with mementos. In Greenville, the SS Katahdin, a vintage 1914 steamboat, is based at the Moosehead Marine Museum, offering frequent cruises up the lake.

In both museums, you learn that ``sports,'' as early soft adventurers were called, came first. They followed fishing and hunting guides into the woods, rivers, and lakes each morning and lodged in remote ``sporting camps'' such as the couple dozen or so that still survive in Maine: rustic central lodges, in which meals are served, surrounded by log cabins.

Rangeley's fishing fame is said to date from a spate of 1863 magazine and newspaper stories based on several brook trout, each weighing five to eight pounds, which their editors had received from a New Jersey fisherman just home from Rangeley.

``What was so impressive was -- and is -- the size of the trout,'' says Don Palmer, president of the Rangeley Region Guides & Sportsmen's Association, a group that traces its origins to 1896 -- a period when, he explains, Rangeley was recognized as home of the largest brook trout in North America.

``Rangeley was -- and is -- also known as a fly-fishing mecca,'' Palmer says, adding that fly-fishing always has been as much a woman's sport as a man's. Witness Cornelia Thurza ``Flyrod'' Crosby, an 1880s pioneer, in the use of the light fly rod and artificial lure and the first Maine registered guide. Then there was Carrie Stevens, a local milliner who in 1924 fashioned a streamer fly from gray feathers and caught a six-pound, 13-ounce brook trout at Upper Dam. Stevens's fish took second prize in Field & Stream's annual competition, and the ``Grey Ghost,'' one of many ties she went on to design, remains one of the most popular among the hundreds of feathery flies now sold at the Rangeley Region Sport Shop in Rangeley, at the River's Edge in Oquossoc, and at the Maine Guide Fly Shop in Greenville.

Both Rangeley and Greenville suddenly seem to be more prosperous and popular than they have been in many years, and once more it's fishermen who seem to be leading the way, luring friends and families. A case can be made that they never went away.

In the '40s and '50s, hotels closed and burned, and many camps were sold off as individual ``condominiums,'' but the fishermen continued to come in spring and fall fishing seasons, staying in the surviving sporting camps and in reasonably priced rental cabins (``camps'' in Mainespeak).

After World War II, most fishermen began to favor easy-to-use ``spinning'' rods and reels and more recent technological advances, such as fishfinders and downriggers, which make it possible to locate and catch landlocked salmon and brook trout that retreat in warm-weather months to 50-foot depths. Downriggers have dramatically increased fishing activity in August.

According to Palmer, fly-fishing, ``a more elegant and challenging fishing'' that's as possible in August as in May, is also enjoying a huge revival. With it has come the concept of ``catch and release,'' rather than keeping and eating the fish. A number of rivers, such as the Kennebago and Rapid in the Rangeley region that are known for trophy fish, are now designated during certain periods as catch and release. Whatever the reasons, lakes, ponds, and rivers in both regions seem to be teeming with many more fish and fishermen than in many an August.

But if landlocked salmon and trout are now the lobster of Maine's Great Lakes, it's the moose, unquestionably, that's the whale of the woods. Moose-watching is drawing visitors in numbers that are translating into new shops and restaurants in both the Rangeley and Moosehead areas and into new upscale lodging on Moosehead.

Moosehead, as you might guess from the name, is a moose mecca. Experts debate whether the name of the lake stems from its shape or from the number of moose you can see there. In 1992, the Moosehead Lake Region Chamber of Commerce launched MooseMainea, an off-season (mid-May to mid-June) festival that courts Moosemaniacs with a series of special events. Last season, according to Toni Blake, chamber director, no fewer than 3,500 moose sightings were recorded during that month.

Moose are best spotted at dawn and dusk on the verge of lakes, ponds, and rivers. Thus, ``moose cruises,'' using pontoon boats or canoes, have become a part of many Maine woods visits.

Moosehead central for moose cruises is Rockwood, a sportsman's outpost at the confluence of the Moose River and the lake, 20 miles north of Greenville on the western shore. This is the narrowest and most dramatic point on Moosehead and the prime access point for Kineo, an islandlike peninsula that's attached to, but virtually inaccessible from, the opposite shore, one with a hill humping up 785 feet from the water.

One of the world's largest masses of rhyolite, a flint-like volcanic rock that is a source of arrowheads found throughout New England, Mount Kineo was also a shrine for Native Americans. They believed it to be the petrified remains of monster moose sent to earth by the Great Spirit as a punishment for sins. At least that's one among the legends recounted during Moose Watch cruises offered by the Moose River Store and by the Birches Resort in Rockwood.

For a century, ``Kin'' was also synonymous with the splendid Mount Kineo House that stood at its base. First opened as a tavern in 1847, it had evolved by 1882 into one of the largest hotels in America, accommodating 500 guests. Then came World War II, followed by the Depression. The hotel burned in 1938. Its annex has also recently vanished, leaving just a ghostly staff building, a huge elm tree, and a row of shingled Victorian-style summer homes, one now the Kineo House, a pleasant bed-and-breakfast that serves lunch and dinner to outside guests.

The former resort's nine-hole golf course is also once more visitor-geared, and most of the peninsula, including the cliffs and a hiking trail to its summit, are now owned by the state. Hikers can take advantage of the Kineo House shuttle from Rockwood Landing hourly 8 a.m. to to 5 p.m., and also the ``Missed the Boat?'' shuttle operated by Rockwood Cottages.

The radio was reporting 90 degrees in Boston on the recent clear, cool day I climbed Kineo. I took the Indian Trail that heads straight up over the distinctively green rocky shoulders of the hill, beneath red pines and a surprising variety of hardwoods. Pausing frequently for sweeping views down the lake, and for blueberries, I found that the climb and descent -- via the far more gradual Bridle Trail -- took three hours. Many hikers spend the better part of a day on Kineo. I returned at dusk for a splendid dinner at Kineo House.

Rockwood itself is now the site of the lake's leading resort, albeit a far smaller and more rustic resort than the old Mount Kineo House. The Birches is an authentic Maine sporting camp built in the 1930s along traditional lines, with several guest rooms in its classic central log lodge and 16 housekeeping cabins. Most of those cabins are also made of log and feature the front overhang and open porch once common to ``Maine camps.'' Each cabin is sequestered in its own grove of trees, and all face the lake and Kineo.

The Willard family, longtime owners of the Birches, has recognized the difference between 1890s and 1990s ``sports,'' namely that the current model wants to watch -- not kill -- wildlife and to experience ``wilderness'' completely, but quickly; i.e., by plunging through white water in a rubber raft, by pedaling a mountain bike over woods trails, or by paddling an hour or two in Thoreau's wake or in search of moose.

The 5:30 a.m. Moose Cruise I took was organized by the Rangeley Inn on the Kennebago River. I tagged along with a busload of Philadelphia-area AARP members and, sure enough, there was a moose -- a beaver, too -- beyond the first bend. The odds of spotting wildlife thereafter were, however, greatly reduced by the din generated by our group of golden agers.

Rangeley attracts fewer than two dozen buses a year, and the entire area can accommodate only 2,700 visitors who are not there as guests of the town's 1,600 summer residents. What's more, beyond the town of Rangeley and village of Oquossoc , it's difficult to see where anybody stays, let alone lives. Homes and camps alike are hidden away down by water.

Rangeley has been lucky in its summer residents. Judith Hunger, longtime editor of The Rangeley Highlander, notes the unusual number of high-powered, high-energy summer people and early retirees who devote skill as well as money to community projects. (Don Palmer, for instance, served as Gilette's comptroller for North America before retiring at age 48.) These range from restoration of the Lakeside Movie House and expansion of the health center to preserving no less than 33,000 acres -- that's 52 square miles -- a cooperative venture involving state agencies and paper companies as well as the Rangeley Lake Heritage Trust, which alone has amassed 10,000 acres since its 1991 creation.

Moosehead Lake has no such protective cushion. While the state has acquired most of Kineo and 20 miles of shoreline in recent years, paper companies still own more than 70 percent of its shore, a situation harshly spotlighted by the recent sale of 60 shoreline acres by South Africa Pulp and Paper.

As yet, the upshot of this particular sale is far from clear, but one positive side effect is the creation of a Rockwood-based North Woods Wilderness Trust with $50,000 in seed money and a focus on preserving land in the Moosehead Lake Region. Any eco-minded philanthropists out there?

Taking no chances, John Willard has acquired 11,000 acres of woodland around the Birches, including frontage on Brassua Lake as well as on Moosehead. His Wilderness Expeditions, one of the pioneers in Maine's white-water rafting industry, now includes bases on both the Kennebec and Penobscot rivers, and the Birches itself is a base for mountain biking, canoeing, kayaking, and fishing as well as rafting in warm-weather months and for cross-country skiing in winter.

What a visitor who hasn't been to either Moosehead or Rangeley for a few years will notice first this summer are the shops. In Rangeley, a handsome Ecopelagicon Nature Store now overlooks Haley Pond, and there is noticeably more art, some in new galleries, some in the Frost Country Craft Gallery, and in Books, Lines, and Thinkers. In Greenville's distinctive mansard-roofed Shaw Block, a trendy Great Eastern Clothing Store has replaced the old Indian Store, and across the way the town's other commercial landmark, Sanders Store, now appropriately houses Northwoods Outfitters, source of rental canoes and kayaks as well as gear. The big store in Greenville is now the Indian Hill Trading Post, but the most unusual is Moosehead Traders, a trove of fur jackets, quality antiques, clothing, and moose antlers -- hundreds of moose antlers.

Shopping options in both towns still include superb, traditional woodcarving. In Rangeley, be sure to stop by the small shop filled with woodcarvings by Rodney Richards and Rodney Richards Jr. (Their work is also on view in the Rangeley Lakes Region Logging Museum, open weekends in August, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. In Greenville, check out woodcarver Joe Bolt. (His fanciful beds and other furnishings, really works of art, grace guest rooms in the upscale Lodge at Moosehead.)

The long-established best places to dine in both Greenville and Rangeley are their namesake inns. The 11-room Greenville Inn, a lumber baron's mansion (circa 1885), richly paneled and sited on a hill with views up the length of the lake, is a true gourmet getaway. Innkeepers Elfie and Suzie Schnauzer rank easily among Maine's top chefs. The 52-room Rangeley Inn, which marks the social as well as physical center of town, has recently changed hands. David Schinas hails from one of those committed summer families, and his wife, Rebecca, has already earned her own reputation in the kitchen.

The big news in Rangeley this summer is the Gingerbread House. A landmark since the turn of the century in the village of Oquossoc, it has not only been preserved but deftly expanded by Ed Kfoury, a former IBM executive who helped found the Rangeley Lakes Heritage Trust.

There are plenty of just plain good local eateries in both Greenville and Rangeley. While we were not impressed with dinner at the Frog Rock Cafe (alias Road Kill Cafe, a small Northern New England chain that began in Greenville Junction), there are the old dependables like the People's Choice (check out the dance floor inlaid with fish) in Rangeley and the Boom Chain and Auntie M's in Greenville.

Moosehead Lake Region dining options range from Folsom's Fly 'n' Dine to Pittston Farm, an authentic former wilderness hub for Great Northerner's logging operations, to Northern Pride Lodge, built by the legendary Sir Harry Oaks in Kokadjo, 18 miles northeast of Greenville.

Folsom's Air Service is the oldest of several flying services that have long served remote camps scattered throughout the Maine Woods and who now also (wouldn't you know) offer moose watches. Greenville, incidentally, is seaplane capital of New England, and its annual Seaplane Fly-in Weekend is Sept. 10-13.

While several upscale B & Bs have opened in Greenville in recent years (most recently, the Blair Hill Inn, a real beauty), the Moosehead Lake Region is still known primarily for its many rental ``camps'' and for the surviving ``sporting camps,'' remote classics like West Branch Pond Camps, off beyond Kokadjo and Little Lyford near Gulf Hagas, as well as for Maynards and the Birches in Rockwood. In Oquossoc, Bald Mountain Camps also epitomizes the traditional sporting camp as do more remote Rangeley Lakes Region fishing resorts like Grant's Kennebago Camps, Bosebuck Mountain Camps, and Lakewood Camps on Middle Dam.

Back to what this article began with: coloring Maine blue. This is the blueberry season, an ideal time to explore inland Maine.

Published 08/09/98 in the Boston Suday Globe's Travel Section