Grafton Notch and Rangeley Loop

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Bethel

   Bethel is a quiet village on the Androscoggin River, in the western mountains of Maine, close to the New Hampshire border. White clapboard houses and a green stand beside the church, and the Mahoosuc Range, rugged and wooded, rises just to the north. The town has about 2,500 people and an old academy, Gould, founded in 1836, whose brick buildings give the place a New England college look. In winter, the Sunday River ski resort a few kilometres north turns the area busy, but in summer and autumn Bethel is peaceful.

   Read the complete Bethel write-up.

2. 2. Grafton Notch

   The notch is the pass where Route 26 cuts through the Mahoosuc Range, between Newry in the south and Upton in the north, and it is one of the finest short stretches of road in the state. The mountains rise steeply on both sides, with Old Speck, at about 4,170 feet the third highest peak in Maine, on the east and Baldpate on the west.

   Read the complete Grafton Notch write-up.

3. 3. Deerfield

   It is a lovely, wooded corner of the state, and Littleton, a small mill-turned-tourist town of about four thousand people, lies fifteen kilometres to the northwest, with Whitefield a little farther off. Fuel and food are in those towns.

   Read the complete Deerfield write-up.

4. 4. Oquossoc

   Oquossoc is hardly a village at all, more a crossing of roads and water where Rangeley Lake narrows toward Mooselookmeguntic. Two long lakes meet here, a lake plane or two sits at the dock, and a few buildings gather around the junction of Routes 4 and 16, with Route 17 branching off south. If you blink you will miss it, but the junction is the key to the whole region, and you will pass through it more than once on any loop.

   Read the complete Oquossoc write-up.

5. 5. Rangeley

   Rangeley is a lake town in a land of lakes, and the lakes are the point. The Rangeley Lakes region, in the far west of Maine, is a chain of long, cold, clear bodies of water strung between forested mountains, and the town sits on the shore of Rangeley Lake itself, about nine miles long. From the nineteenth century onward the region was famous for its brook trout and landlocked salmon, and wealthy sportsmen came by train and stage to stay in big wooden lodges and sporting camps.

   Read the complete Rangeley write-up.

6. 6. Rumford

   Rumford is a paper town, and you can smell it before you see it. The mill on the Androscoggin River has been the center of local life since the 1890s, when Hugh Chisholm built a big pulp-and-paper operation beside the river's great falls, and the plume of steam over the plant is a landmark visible from the surrounding hills. The falls themselves, which drop about 177 feet in a short distance, powered the mill, and they remain among the highest falls in the eastern United States east of Niagara, though the flow is now regulated.

   Read the complete Rumford write-up.

7. 7. Back to Bethel

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Bethel write-up.