Jackman get around · Get around Jackman
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Get around Jackman
Get around Jackman
By car, snowmobile, boat, bike, ATV, floatplane, or on foot.
There are two main paved roads in town (201 & 15), many snowmobile trails, and dozens of dirt roads primarily built & used by the forest industry.
Today, most travel is of course motor driven. Historically, the Native Americans and European Colonists travelled by water, however, given the impassibility of the woods.
The Kennebec/Chaudière watersheds define the region. Jackman is set at the headwaters of the Kennebec River, which is the watershed that drains the center of the state. The two mains lakes in the town's boundaries, Attean Lake and Big Wood Lake are both a part of the Moose River, a tributary of the Kennebec. The Moose flows east from Jackman into Moosehead Lake (the largest in Maine, near Greenville) and then into the Kennebec which flows out of Moosehead to the southeast back past a small town called The Forks (year round population about 30, base for the rafting industry in the area, located about a half hour south of Jackman on Route 201, where the Dead River & Kennebec converge.) The Kennebec River then continues south to Skowhegan and Waterville, past the state capital Augusta, to the sea.
Immediately to the north is the Chaudière watershed, which flows into the St. Lawrence. There is a coalition of the Maine and Quebec Tourism offices which may be of interest, the Kennebec-Chaudière International Corridor .
The Native Americans would winter on the coast, and travel by canoe inland in the spring to the headwaters of the Kennebec to hunt and gather other resources. Mount Kineo on Mooosehead (near Rockwood, 30 minutes to the east of Jackman) was a primary source for flint, for example. Most of the Rivers (not to mention many other place names in Maine) are derived from Native American names that describe the place, as a sort of trip tik or description of the locale. The name "Kennebec" signifies "where alewives are cured" - in reference to a place on the river (probably near or on the coast) where the Native Americans dried fish. The many other names of Native American derivation in Maine have similar meanings.
The Post Colonial era just as fascinating. In 1775, Benedict Arnold led an expedition of 750 men by boat up the Kennebec by Jackman, then onto the Chaudiere in a failed attack on Quebec City.
In 1853, Henery David Thoreau took a train to Greenville, and then canoed from Greenville, by way of two mile long portages, to Bangor. His guide was a Penobscot Indian named Joe Attean, his name being the same as that of Attean Lake, in Jackman (the derivation of the name is probably from the French name Etienne, or Steven, which shows how the three cultures, Native, French and English, melded). Note that Jackman is at the head of that same watershed, and that if you are willing to portage two separate one mile portages, you can canoe from Jackman (or Greenville, say) all the way to either Bangor (down the Penobscot watershed) or St. John, New Brunswick ("up" the Allagash onto the St. John watershed) to the sea.
The above is only mentioned by way of describing what has been done by ancients and heroes. It is in no way an endorsement or suggestion.
It would take roughly two weeks & a bit of logistical support to canoe from Jackman to Bangor (say) - a radical trip. Just know it can be done.
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Jackman Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.