(upbeat music) (projector clicking) - Have you ever wondered where the television signal you're watching is coming from?

♪ I love to go a wanderin' (projector clicking) ♪ along the mountain track - Welcome to True North.

(upbeat music) (mysterious music) - Good evening and welcome to Mainewatch (upbeat music) (projector clicking) Welcome to "From The Vault", a celebration of 60 years of Maine Public Television.

On this episode, we spent some time on Maine rivers and lakes, as well as under and above, in a couple of cases.

We start in 2001 with the special "Flowing Past" that looks at the history and then current state of the Kennebec and Dead rivers.

In that show you will see Steve Longley who, until his retirement in 2007, operated the Appalachian Trail Ferry Service in Carratunk.

Steve sadly passed away in 2013, but we will revisit the ferry service and our 2020 segment that looks at how the pandemic has affected hikers along the trail.

Then we go back to 1998 for an episode of the magazine "True North" for what lies below Flagstaff Lake.

Don Carrigan brings us memories of the town of Flagstaff now beneath the lake after a nearby dam was built.

Then we soar above rivers and towns in northern Maine with a short from the autumn of 2019.

Let's start on the river as we go back to 2001 for "Flowing Past".

(peaceful music) (water flows) (peaceful music) (relaxing music) - [Narrator] On the boundary between Maine and Quebec, in the mountains of Moosehorn and the Kennebago divide, a river is born.

Here, water from winter snow and springtime showers begins its long journey to the Atlantic Ocean.

This ribbon of water winds to the south creating a mighty river, the Kennebec, strong in both current and history.

Gravity pulls the water from countless streams down from height of land and into the lakes below.

Moosehead, The greatest of all New England Lakes, 40 miles across with 350 miles of shoreline, holds the water for the east branch of the Kennebec.

Flagstaff Lake supplies the west branch, commonly called the Dead River, but the river is anything but dead calm.

(peaceful music) Class four and five rapids on each branch thrill ecotourists with some of the best whitewater in North America.

(peaceful music) The East Branch and the Dead meet at the Forks, the perfect location for a small town that lives off the bounty of the river.

From this point south, the river becomes one.

(peaceful music) For over 230 miles, the flowing water gives life to the land through towns like Bingham, Skowhegan, Waterville, Augusta, and Bath, and finally to meet the Gulf of Maine at Popham.

This is the Kennebec.

The valley's first people were Abenaki, relatives of the Algonquins from the west.

The river provided nourishment, transportation, and spiritual strength to their people For thousands of years.

Over time, the river and the people came to be known by the same name, Kennebec.

The river connected one generation of Kennebecs to the next.

Ancient etchings in the rocks along the shore called petroglyphs tell the story of these Native Americans.

When winter snows descended upon the river, the Abenaki would retreat inland to the headwaters near Moosehead Lake.

Despite the harsh weather, deer and moose flourished here, providing food and clothing to the earliest people who called the Kennebec their home.

(peaceful music) (water flows) In the spring and summer, they left the deep woods to the mosquitoes and black flies and canoed to the river's mouth.

Here, estuaries provided an abundance of fish and seal and the dramatic retreat of the tide left shellfish for the taking.

Unlike Maine's native inhabitants, the first European settlers tried to build a permanent home on the lower Kennebec, a part of the river they called Sagadahoc.

The Englishmen were looking for a major river to settle upon.

They believed it would be rich in resources and close to native people, a place where they could trade for furs and supplies.

They might even find the elusive Northwest Passage through North America to the Far East.

(peaceful music) - We're at the site of Fort St. George, which was the principal settlement of the Popham Colony, which was established here in 1607.

But colonists gave up, and about a year later in 1608, the fall of 1608, and went home.

What we are doing is excavating this site, which is quite unique in that it was only occupied for a year and was not reoccupied for a couple of centuries so that it is a very good archeological exploration.

We have what is essentially a time capsule here.

(melancholic music) - [Narrator] The colony lacked leadership after George Popham, the colony president, died and Captain Raleigh Gilbert was called back to England.

The remaining men knew they could not last another winter, not without the help of the Abenaki, a people who had grown increasingly wary of the English.

Two years earlier, when George Weymouth explored nearby Pemaquid, he kidnapped five Indians and shipped them across the ocean to England.

One of the kidnapped, Skidwarres, returned as part of the Popham expedition, but abandoned his post as translator and returned to his people the first chance he could get.

While the Popham colony failed to launch a permanent settlement, they did build and launch the first European ship in the New World, the Virginia.

(insects chirp) Since the launch of the Virginia almost 400 years ago, the broad flat waters of the lower Kennebec River have proven ideal for a prosperous shipbuilding industry.

The steady flow of water from the head of navigation in Augusta south through Bath has ferried countless new ships out to the open sea.

(peaceful music) They first came for ship masts, Kennebec River white pine at least two feet at the base and over 70 feet tall.

The best trees were marked and felled for the King of England's Royal Navy.

But there were enough left to supply hundreds of new ships, including the masts for Old Ironsides, which were hewed and Gardiner and floated to Boston.

(peaceful music continues) Harvesting trees for the mast trade served a dual purpose.

As trees were caught along the banks, Kennebec Valley land opened up for shelter building and agriculture.

In practically every town along the river, sawmills used the remaining logs to produce boards, barrels, staves, and shingles.

This early lumbering provided the means for building the first settlements.

The seemingly endless supply of wood and the gradual slope of the riverbank helped turn the small towns along the lower Kennebec into shipbuilding titans.

- The shipbuilding industry on the southern part of this river was just mind-boggling.

The number of ships, thinking of three-masted schooners, pulling up to Richmond and Bowdoinham.

Bowdoinham, little town on the Kennebec, actually built more ships at one point than the town of Bath.

- It was the main highway across for many, many years for this area.

And they built an awful lot of ships here in this area here and further up the river.

The trucks of the old days were the schooners and that's how you got your food, and your gear, and that stuff in New York, and Philadelphia, and Boston.

- [Narrator] From Clark and Lake's first shipyard in the early 1600s to General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works today, it has been said that the lower Kennebec has built more ships than any other equal length of waterfront in the world.

Every type of Seagoing vessel was built on the Kennebec, but it's the big vessels which attract the attention, ships like the 450-foot five-masted schooner the Wyoming built in 1909 by Percy and Small less than a mile from where Bath Iron Works launches the Aegis guided missile destroyers, the most technologically advanced surface ships ever built.

Steering these big ships through the narrow confines of the lower Kennebec has always been difficult.

Captain Bill Rich has piloted many of BIW's biggest Navy ships from the docks in Bath along the twists and turns of the river and out to the open waters of the Atlantic.

(peaceful music) Even with combined horsepower of ship and tug, Captain Rich is not guaranteed a smooth ride.

He understands more than most the monumental task it must have been to guide four- and five-masted schooners along these same waters.

- And when we go on trials, we have on the bridge lots of people looking, watching.

And we got down to Doubling Point here and I didn't know whether she'd make the corner.

And I figure, well, I'll slow the ship down and I'll use the bow thruster and the tug to push the bow around and I'll have the tug on the port quarter push the stern the other way, so we'll swing.

Well, we didn't swing and I tell the engine room and I said, next bell I'm gonna give you is full ahead.

Give me full ahead right off the bat, don't go easy, give it to me.

And I put the rudder hard over and we kicked her around.

And plus the bow didn't look like it was turned very much, but when I went and looked aft, the stern was swinging a mile a minute and I thought, oh my God, I'm gonna be unable to stop her, but she stopped.

- Bath Iron Works has made history on the Kennebec many times since it was started in 1884 by General Thomas W. Hyde.

Here in February of 2001, BIW takes delivery of a 750-foot dry dock towed 16,000 miles from China where it was built.

(peaceful music) Once in place, the dry dock will end the century-old tradition of launching ships from the sloping shore into the Kennebec.

(crowd mutters) (band plays) (peaceful music) - [Bill] It's a beautiful river and it's real lovely to go down, we have eagles, we had eagles, we still do, that follow the ship down on one side.

they'll follow you all the way down to the end> When they cross the bow, we'd say that gives sign of good luck for the ship.

That always made the captain feel good, that good luck ship.

(peaceful music) - [Narrator] During the peak of commerce on the Kennebec, more than 350 ships each day would pass by Fort Popham, the Civil War era fort built to protect this great industry from Confederate attack.

(peaceful music continues) The earliest fort on the Kennebec was built in 1754, more than 100 years before the Civil War.

It was called Fort Western, and it continues to stand today as the oldest wooden fort in New England.

It was here at Fort Western that Benedict Arnold began his disastrous assaults on Quebec in 1775.

During the American Revolution, Arnold and his 1,100 men sailed up the Kennebec to Augusta, where Major Reuben Colburn was hastily constructing a special kind of riverboat called a bateau.

- Reuben Colburn had 30 days to build these bateaus.

He built 200 bateaus in 30 days for this expedition.

This expedition was a hurry-up thing.

Fall was coming on and how they constructed 200 bateaus in 30 days, I'll never know.

- [Narrator] With winter approaching, Arnold led his troops against the strength of the Kennebec then overland to the Dead.

Arnold's troops struggled against the power of the river and found themselves carrying their boats up the Dead as much as they rode them.

- A third of his whole battalion had had turned around and gone home because of sickness and lack of food.

And when they got to this point, it was either make or break, either go through or turn around and starve on the way home.

So they wanted freedom pretty bad, everything they had was at risk and they kept going.

(mournful music) - Unfortunately, 500 weary, cold, and hungry men were in no condition to fight the British at Quebec and they were defeated on a bitter New Year's Eve.

(mournful music continues) The Kennebec has always been a liquid road for people to move about whether they were covering great distances up and down the river or just trying to get across on one of the many ferries from Gardiner to Randolph.

Many types of craft have been used, but none quite as versatile as Mike Kiernan's jet boat.

Starting in the late spring, he ferries tourists along the Kennebec, sharing with them the wonder and beauty of this majestic river.

(upbeat music) - It's a very economical way to give people an opportunity to get out on the water and enjoy it.

And one of the advantages that's unique to this part of the Kennebec River is that the experience is visually very contextual.

Days Ferry that we just passed is a small village on the shore of the Kennebec in Woolwich.

Days Ferry was one of the early ferry crossing locations in this part of the Kennebec because the distance from the shore on the Bath side to the Woolwich shore in this instance is very close, probably about three football fields across.

And so in the 1700s, they didn't have steamships or motor-powered vessels, so they depended upon crossing with oars and sails and so on.

- [Narrator] Early bridges were built and rebuilt as construction techniques and stronger materials allowed engineers to design longer spans.

In 1927, the completion of the Carlton Bridge between Bath and Woolwich was the first bridge across the Kennebec capable of supporting a train.

The townspeople of Bath and Woolwich celebrated again in 2000 when the new Sagadahoc Bridge was completed in time to greet the next millennium.

But there is still at least one crossing that remains true to its roots, the Appalachian Trail in Caratunk.

(insects chirp) Steve Longley has been helping hikers across this stretch since 1987.

- River to base camp, come in please.

The Kennebec, it's the only place on the trail where they have a ferry service.

So that part of it makes Maine a special place and Maine is indeed one of the best places to hike on the whole trail.

(peaceful music) - A lot of people look forward to the Kennebec River.

Everybody looks forward to Maine.

The hiking's incredible.

It's the first spot on the trail where you're just dabbled with lakes, ponds, rivers, and water is, you just love the water.

It makes the views spectacular from a mountaintop.

- [Narrator] Steve will help about 1,500 hikers cross the Kennebec this year, the only river on the Appalachian Trail with a dedicated ferry guide (peaceful music) (peaceful music) For centuries, the frozen Kennebec was a beautiful place to fish and skate, but a very real obstacle to commerce.

That is until some industrious Yankees realized they could sell the frozen river in warmer latitudes.

In 1815, the Kennebec River ice industry was born.

- Kennebec River ice had some qualities that no lake ice had.

I don't know just what it was, whether it was the minerals or other matter picked up in the water coming down from Moosehead Lake, the temperature of the water coming down from so far to the north, what it was, but it had a good quality.

- [Narrator] Kennebec diamonds earned a wide reputation as Kennebec River ships delivered the precious cargo along the eastern seaboard to the Gulf Coast, Cuba, and the Caribbean.

Eleanor Everson of Dresden had ancestors who used to cut ice from the Kennebec.

Her relatives did this backbreaking labor, packing the ice slabs into schooners and sending them south for distribution.

- Snow is a good insulator, so they had to keep the snow off the ice in order for it to freeze to a good thickness, proper thickness.

- [Narrator] Before the harvesting could begin, a channel was cut through the ice.

These pathways saved the horses from hauling for the blocks could simply be floated along to the ice house.

Once these channels were cleared, heavy horse-drawn cutters would plow the surface, leaving deep grooves behind.

From these precut marks, the cakes of ice were carefully broken out.

- It was a cold job.

My mother told about one cold morning, and it was probably down in the 30 degree below zero range.

And the men did not go out on the river that morning.

And we had a telephone and the wife of one of the men called and she'd harnessed their horse and taken their children down to the village to the school.

When he hung up the telephone, he started getting his outside clothing on.

Some of the other men says, where are you going?

If my wife can harness up the horse and take the children to school, he says, I'm going out on the river and work.

- [Narrator] By the 1860s, the market for Kennebec ice boomed.

In 1886 alone, over a million tons of ice were cut from the river.

60 different ice companies lined the Kennebec in towns like Pittston, Dresden, and Richmond.

Workers would all flock to the frozen diamond mines each winter.

- [Eleanor] Come all you men of every land who are inclined to rove.

You're sure of work on the Kennebec at a place called Cedar Grove.

Be sure you're well provided with clothing new and old for if you're not, as sure as you're born, you'll be frozen with the cold.

- [Narrator] When Kennebec River ships weren't carrying blocks of ice, they were transporting blocks of granite from the quarries near Hallowell to the streets and buildings of Boston, New York, Chicago, and Washington DC.

Skilled artisans from Italy came to Hallowell in the 1870s to work for the Hallowell Granite Works.

Many families established businesses along the riverfront that still remain in operation today.

(peaceful music) By the early 1900s, the cutting of blocks of ice and blocks of granite faded, but the lumber industry continued to prosper.

Logs cut in the winter months were stacked on the river ice until breakup in the spring when the men of the Kennebec Log Driving Company, or KLD, would take over and float the logs to the various mills.

(peaceful music continues) The Madison Bulletin reported in July of 1887 there were 150 million logs in the Kennebec drive this year, the largest drive known to date.

The lumber industry helped Maine develop into a major force in the national economy.

But this did not last.

The state's lumber harvest began to decline due to increased harvests in western states and depleted hardwood stocks here.

The still abundant supply of spruce and other soft woods was ideal for the production of pulp and paper.

As a result, logs continued to float down the Kennebec and Dead Rivers.

- I lived in Skowhegan about a hundred yards from the river when I was four years old.

And you couldn't see the river in those days, you saw logs floating.

I mean, they were jammed up so tight for miles and miles you couldn't even see the water.

(peaceful music) - In the old log drive days, they brought the rafts of pulp down the lake and booms and passed them through the log sloes into the river and down through.

The river was not a recreational river at the time.

It was more a conveyance of logs.

- [Speaker] It was considered, as most rivers were, an area that one does business on.

Either one gets rid of one's waste on or one gets one's logs down, kind of the industrial end of things.

- When I was a kid in Fairfield, growing up in Fairfield, you didn't go near the river.

If you went near the river, you got the dickens when you got home.

It was an open sewer for the most part.

It was nothing you wanted to have anything to do with.

- [Narrator] Mike Holt has spent his entire life along the Kennebec.

Today, he's a fishing guide, something that was unthinkable just 20 years ago.

As more logs and chemicals were dumped into the river, fewer fish and wildlife could survive.

(peaceful music) In 1976, the Kennebec Log Driving Company floated the last logs down the Kennebec.

The practice was deemed harmful to water quality.

With the passage of the Clean Water Act in the 1970s, the community came together to restore the Kennebec to its natural beauty and clarity.

- It started from some pretty serious fishermen.

People began to think, well, this is our river.

We can have this river back.

This isn't just a river for industry and this isn't just a river for somebody else, it's our river.

I think that's how the whole thing started.

(peaceful music) - [Narrator] Like so many things we have put into the river over the years, many people think it's time to remove some of the dams.

The Edwards Dam originally constructed in 1837 was removed in 1999, restoring the Kennebec between Augusta and Waterville to what the river was like in the early 1800s.

(peaceful music) Today, Betsy Ham at the Natural Resources Council of Maine is turning up evidence that the breaching and removal of the Edwards Dam is having a positive impact on the flora and fauna which call the Kennebec River home.

- The thing about this river is that it wasn't a river when the dam was in, it wasn't a lake, the water's moving too fast, but it's too deep for a river.

So you've got this kind of an in-between system that doesn't, it's not very good for life.

And as soon as the dam came out, it was a river again.

It moved more quickly.

It was more shallow where oxygen was able to get into the water and the comeback was almost instant.

In fact, within months of the breaching, the water quality rebounded from barely making the grade as far as okay water quality to very good water quality.

And the really interesting thing is it's keeping changing its personality, if you went out last fall, there was a lot, the islands were different, the channels were different, the river's finding it's old haunts again after 160 years.

And so next spring, I expect it'll be different again.

- [Narrator] The people of the river valley know the many faces of the Kennebec.

Disastrous floods in 1826 and 1896 kept stories circulating from generation to generation.

Then in March of 1936, the big one hit.

An unusually warm weather system melted the snow pack in mere days.

Heavy rain followed and the river rose to devastating heights.

200 people lost their lives in the great flood of '36 and thousands lost their homes.

(melancholic music) Today, dams have better control of the watershed, but each spring thaw reminds us of the awesome power of the Kennebec.

(water flows) Flood control is a big benefit to the people who choose to live in the Kennebec River Valley.

But the companies which own the dams know they have a responsibility to the wildlife, as well.

(melancholic music continues) Biologist Bill Hanson collects data regularly to help determine the impact dams have on the wildlife living along the river.

- [Bill] Sort of our responsibility to do our homework up here and make sure that we're not having negative impacts on the resources up here, rather its wetlands, or fisheries or what have you.

We're basically sharing this resource with the people of Maine.

We're sharing this river and we're using the water as it goes downstream for our benefit to generate power.

But we don't want to be taking away other opportunities out here that people enjoy.

(peaceful music) We like to think that we do a pretty good job coexisting and sharing this river resource with a multiple number of users, including fishermen, whitewater rafters, and private kayakers to name a few.

And some of the ways that we do that is that the times that we like to generate electricity in the middle of the day, also those flows turn this river gorge into one of the premier whitewater segments in the northeast.

So the commercial rafting customers come and utilize those same flows for boating.

And at the same time, our lower flows in the early evening and early morning accommodate the fishermen who like to come in and fish in the river.

- [Narrator] Before the Edwards Dam was removed, there were 11 dams on the Kennebec and Dead Rivers.

Not all are hydro dams.

(water flows) The Long Falls Dam, for example, is a storage dam.

It holds back the Dead River, forming Flagstaff Lake.

The lake is named for the town that was disbanded and then flooded in the 1950s in order to provide a ready supply of water for the Wyman Dam down river.

(peaceful music) The dams on the Kennebec and Dead are all part of an interconnected system designed to harness water power.

First, mechanical power to saw wood, mill grain and paper pulp, and later to run machinery and generate electricity.

In the late 1800s, more jobs existed in the mills along the Kennebec than did Mainers to fill them.

Between the years of 1870 and 1929, over one million French Canadians left the farming and lumbering communities of Quebec to find work in towns like Waterville, Winslow, and Fairfield.

Today, Franco-Americans represent one quarter of Maine's population.

(peaceful music continues) Many of the former industrial uses of the river have now disappeared, but the hydro dam systems continue to operate because they can better coexist.

Nowhere is this balance more evident than in the upper Kennebec Valley.

Here the system of hydro dams generates electricity for all of New England, while also providing recreational opportunities that might not otherwise exist.

- Just about seven days a week, we have what they call rafting flows when they pretty much guarantee us a minimum of 4,800 cubic feet of water per second, which is a lot of water, coming out of that dam or better and it's worked great for us.

(water flows) (rafters scream) - The Kennebec is big fun every day.

It is adrenaline, it is excitement.

It is putting yourself on the edge and keeping everyone safe in your boat and allowing them to enjoy the challenge and the excitement of the river, but feel comfortable when they're doing it.

- [Narrator] Benedict Arnold and his men made slow progress up the Dead River.

More than two centuries later, this wild stretch of water now attracts thousands of rafters every year and they move much faster.

(peaceful music) - [Suzie] The Dead has the most whitewater of any of the three rivers.

It's almost 16 miles of solid whitewater.

The only thing is, it only gets to, we only see big releases, I think, seven or eight times a year, so it kind of makes it special.

We don't have it every day like you do the Kennebec.

- The Dead River's unique, it's a true wilderness experience.

(water flows) It's considered one of the best rivers in North America because it's unbroken, there's no civilization for 15 miles.

(water flows) - [Elizabeth] Well, the great thing about the Dead is that it starts off easier and it gets bigger as you go.

(peaceful music) So for people who haven't gone before or even veterans of whitewater, you get used to it, you build into it.

You learn how to paddle, you learn to work with a team of paddlers that you're with that day, and then by the end of it all, Poplar Hill falls is the biggest rapid, and it's all the excitement is right there.

(peaceful music) - [Narrator] These Kennebec and Dead Rivers have drawn people young and old from all over the world.

Whatever the reason, for many, a visit to these rivers is a source of rejuvenation.

- Both sides ahead.

- [Elizabeth] A lot of people that come up here, they're from the cities, they're from Boston, New York, they haven't seen this many trees, and we see wildlife, we see osprey and bald eagle, and occasionally you'll see a moose or a deer and there's nothing like it.

I mean, just when you don't see anything, you just take a deep breath and you can smell the trees and it's just, there's no other experience like it.

It's just the pure wilderness.

- [Suzie] I think people really enjoy coming up here because of the beauty, the excitement.

And they love, nothing they love better than to bring more people back, they gotta show their friends, they like to come in groups and to show them what they have experienced.

- The Kennebec River is a life blood through a lot of communities.

People tend to put more value into their natural resources.

They don't take things for granted.

It isn't clean because someone took it for granted.

It's clean because the energy is there and the people, the dedication of people to preserve, to improve the condition of the river, it's constant.

It is a mirror of ourselves how we treat the surroundings surround us.

- It's an important river in so many different ways.

To fishermen, it's a great place to fish for anything from smallmouth bass, to striped bass, to you name it.

(peaceful music) For the walkers and the bird watchers, it's a wonderful place to enjoy eagles, bald eagles and osprey, and all kinds of wading birds.

And for folks that like to paddle, it's a beautiful paddle.

So there's so many reasons, so many experiences to get out here and do it.

(peaceful music continues) If people don't really come out, they won't really get it.

And I think as soon as you're out in the water, you get it.

Oh yeah, this is part of Maine.

This is an important river no matter where you live in Maine and a place worth visiting and worth cherishing.

(peaceful music continues) (water trickles) - Maggie, come, come on, let's go.

- [Narrator] He's known as the ferryman.

- Good girl.

- [Narrator] And from the end of May to October, he and his four-legged assistant Maggie shuttle hikers from one side of the Kennebec River to the other.

- Sit, sit down.

Sit down, good girl.

- [Narrator] In fact, his weather-beaten 17-foot Old Town triple canoe is the only sanctioned means to cross the river.

There's even a white blaze on the inside that officially marks the trail.

- And so we have a blaze in the bottom, everybody likes to see the blaze.

Some people like to touch every blaze, they'll touch that one.

But this year, when they touch the blaze, I'll put a little hand sanitizer on the hands right after.

- It's only about 100 yards across the river.

But there's a reason that the Appalachian Trail Conservancy pays Greg Caruso to offer the ferry service free of charge.

Since the origin of the Appalachian Trail in 1937, this crossing has depended on a ferry.

That's because the swift moving Kennebec River cannot be safely forded, when dams upstream release water, the river here rises several feet in a matter of minutes.

A registered Maine guide, Caruso's had the job for the past five years, but full-time ferry service has been in place since the 1980s after an experienced hiker carrying her pack attempted to cross on her own.

Alice Ference was swept away and drowned.

Her death and other near misses haven't stopped others from trying to do the same.

- Well, every year some people decide to try and ford the river, and I'm sure some are successful, but might hear horror stories all the time each year, probably a handful of them, because a friend of mine lives down around the corner.

He's had to go out and rescue a few people that have tried to cross here when the water's been up.

- [Narrator] Over the years, the idea of building a bridge to replace the ferryman has been rejected.

Too expensive and too difficult is the assessment, primarily because of the ice jams that form on the river in late winter.

- And literally there'll be eight, 10 feet of ice right here, kind of like a big iceberg on the side.

So I don't know how you build a bridge and span that 400-some odd feet all the way so that you would be out of the way of those big icebergs.

- [Narrator] So Caruso keeps showing up for work.

Normally he says he would've paddled nearly 300 hikers across the Kennebec between the end of May and the first week of July.

This year, during that same time, he's only taken 50.

Because of COVID-19, hikers were advised to get off the AT and many have opted not to complete it this year.

But in the past, this section of the trail has gotten busy.

Caruso never knows what to expect.

- The most I've ever taken in a day is 56.

That was five hours nonstop.

Didn't even take a break.

- [Narrator] This year, there's a lot more waiting around, but Caruso says he doesn't mind.

He spends the time reading, fishing, and enjoying the scenic views from his office on the river, the only one of its kind for nearly 2,200 miles.

For Maine Public Radio News, I'm Susan Sharon.

(water trickles) Here's Patsy Wiggins.

And now you're about to meet some Maine people who lost their hometown.

Their town is Flagstaff It no longer exists.

It, along with the tiny villages of Bigelow and Dead River, were washed away by rising waters when a new dam was built to create Flagstaff Lake.

Now, for some people, memories of the way it was are still very vivid.

Producer Don Carrigan went in search of the village that used to be to find the people who used to live there and the crews of the lake to see if there are any remnants of what is.

Flagstaff remembered it was very friendly, like a big family.

I remember how friendly the people were.

It was all like one big family and people helping each other.

And when necessary, everyone really, really regretted having to come in.

The Valley of the Dead River is gone now.

Vanished like the farms and the houses and the people who once called this place home, replaced by a big lake, replaced on the map, but not in the minds of those who grew up here.

If you had stood on this spot, could you look down there and see the village?

Yeah.

It was all farms.

Once in a while you'd see a building.

Probably the buildings were a quarter a half mile of each farm seemed to have two or 300 acres.

The river here was extremely crooked, like a piece of ribbon candy.

And each one of those bins was a nice big individual where they mowed and kept the cattle and and had a farmhouse nearby.

The village was over.

Over near the other shore.

The Duluth wing remembers his hometown like it was yesterday.

He grew up in this house in Flagstaff, a community of several hundred people a few miles away, where the smaller villages of Bigelow and Dead River Small, but very nice.

Mm hmm.

Like.

Like she said, one big family.

Jerry Bandler and her sister, Beulah Davis, have fond memories.

Of Flagstaff.

But it is it is a sad story about the town of Flagstaff.

What happened to it and how we got flooded?

Yeah, The people of Flagstaff, you see, had the bad luck to live in the path of progress.

A group of businesses headed by Central Maine Power Company decided the dead river should be dammed to generate electricity and control flooding, they said.

Little happened for years.

The Depression came, then the war.

But shortly after World War Two, the dam project began in earnest.

Lumber crews cleared the woods.

CMP began buying houses and farms And the people went some willingly.

Others, like Hilda Ames, went carrying a grudge.

We felt like they were pushing this out, and we really resented central Maine very much There was a final old home day's party in 1949.

A gathering of all the townspeople to dance once more, to look at each other at those faces and friends so familiar and to say a last goodbye.

And when they had packed up their clothing and furniture and photographs of the people of these three towns, packed up their dead from the cemeteries of Flagstaff and Bigelow and Dead River, those who had founded the town's found a new home.

Then the water began to rise, and in the spring, Flagstaff was gone.

Those who can come back each summer for old home days, they gather in the tiny chapel built with lumber from the town, with the stained glass windows and the pews and the bell from the old church in Flagstaff.

They celebrate each other and the shared memories of homes they can never see again.

But we have our memories.

So that's why we here two days Over the years, has it seemed odd to come from a town that doesn't exist anymore?

Yes.

It's rather a strange feeling.

Yes, the old piano doesn't play anymore.

But Flora Shaw and Eleanor Burbank remember dancing to that piano in the hall above the old store.

Oh, yes.

They'd rather dance than eat at the main street in Flagstaff and get undressed here.

Full lake.

I think there's 12 feet of water in over the tan road here in the town of Flagstaff.

Duluth wing is closer to Flagstaff than most.

He has been chosen to name the islands in the lake wing.

And over the years, he has wandered the shores and the islands looking and remembering.

Was it a pretty valley?

Very much so.

Very pretty.

As you look at pictures now, it was it was just beautiful, you know, serene and we didn't have any money, but we were rich and didn't know it.

Yeah, the schoolhouse, if you ask, doing, will show you the cellar of the old Flagstaff schoolhouse or I think the cellar was also the gym where they played basketball.

And sometimes when the generator was having a tough night, the lights could get pretty dim.

There was about four to five or six kids in each grade.

We had 12 grades.

I'd say when I was a kid, there were 70 or 80 kids going to school here.

And over east of Schoolhouse Island is a little rise.

They called Jim Eaton Hill.

This is where Pearl Stevens had his farm.

He got his money and moved out, but he would never have been no more than some of the other people.

Some of the people were happy to move.

There was no money in town, and they took the 1500 dollars they got for the farm and and moved out of town.

You know, I think my father, he was a very quiet person, and I think he held a lot of it in Pearl, his daughter, Ruthie Stevens.

Baldwin grew up on this hill.

I think the older people really, really shook them up.

And also the young kids.

I know my one of my cousins was five and that's when he started stuttering.

We moved out and a few years ago, an odd thing happened to the business that owned old gym.

Eaton Hill decided to sell and do.

Wing found out and told Ruthie Baldwin they each managed to buy a piece of land and build camps.

What is just a beautiful place?

Yes, we think so.

Almost 50 years after they and their families and friends were forced to leave Duluth wing and Ruthie Stevens Baldwin are back.

The only residents of the town where they were born and we didn't realize at the time perhaps how beautiful it was.

You know a few years ago they drew the water down.

So it was practically in the old riverbed when we could walk down through the streets and while you could see the foundations really there in your mind, I think are your heart, you can see the house.

They are back in the shadow of Bigelow back in the peace and beauty of the valley of the dead river, back in what for them will always be the town of Flagstaff, I'm Don Carrigan for True North ("Life In Color" by One Republic