The Maine North Woods is the northern geographic area of the state of Maine in the United States.
It covers more than 3.5 million acres (14,000 km²) of top forest land bordered by Canada to the west and north and by the early 20th century transportation corridors of the Canadian Pacific International Railway of Maine to the south and the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad Ashland branch to the east. It includes western Aroostook and northern Somerset, Penobscot, and Piscataquis counties. Much of the woods is currently owned by the timber corporations, including Seven Islands Land Company, Plum Creek, Maibec, Orion Timberlands and Irving timber corporations. Ownership changes hands quite frequently and is often difficult to determine.
Its main products are timber for pulp and lumber, as well as a thriving hunting and outdoor recreation economy.
Included within its boundaries are two of the most famous wild rivers of the Northeastern United States: the St. John and the Allagash. The North Maine Woods completely surrounds the Allagash Wilderness Waterway.
Read more about Maine North Woods: Wildlife, Folklore, Proposed National Park
Famous quotes containing the words maine, north and/or woods:
“Making a logging-road in the Maine woods is called “swamping” it, and they who do the work are called “swampers.” I now perceived the fitness of the term. This was the most perfectly swamped of all the roads I ever saw. Nature must have coöperated with art here.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When the Somalians were merely another hungry third world people, we sent them guns. Now that they are falling down dead from starvation, we send them troops. Some may see in this a tidy metaphor for the entire relationship between north and south. But it would make a whole lot more sense nutritionally—as well as providing infinitely more vivid viewing—if the Somalians could be persuaded to eat the troops.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“Perhaps our own woods and fields,—in the best wooded towns, where we need not quarrel about the huckleberries,—with the primitive swamps scattered here and there in their midst, but not prevailing over them, are the perfection of parks and groves, gardens, arbors, paths, vistas, and landscapes. They are the natural consequence of what art and refinement we as a people have.... Or, I would rather say, such were our groves twenty years ago.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)