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“A Last Chance For Wilderness”: Defining The Allagash Wilderness Waterway, 1959-1966, Richard W. Judd

Maine History

Seen in national perspective, the Allagash Wilderness Waterway is arguably Maine's most dramatic environmental accomplishment. The waterway resulted from an extended debate over several mutually exclusive proposals for the north Maine woods— dams to flood it; national parks to preserve it; and recreational schemes to transform it into a Coney Island of the North. In the mid-1960s, a coalition of landowners and conservationists cobbled together a preservation plan that conformed to the 1968 Federal Wild and Scenic River Act but pioneered several unique features that gave the wilderness idea a decidedly “eastern” twist. As a result, the waterway became a …