Rangeley Lakes and Height of Land

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Farmington

   Farmington is a college town that happens to sit at the gateway to western Maine's mountains. The University of Maine at Farmington gives the main street a few cafes and a bookstore, and the Sandy River runs through the valley below, with wooded hills on every side. It is a quiet, old-fashioned place, with brick buildings, white churches and a courthouse, and it serves as the county seat and the commercial hub for a large, thinly populated region.

   Read the complete Farmington write-up.

2. 2. 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.

3. 3. 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.

4. 4. Height of Land

5. 5. 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.

6. 6. Back to Farmington

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Farmington write-up.