The Most Remote State Park East Of The Mississippi

Baxter State Park in northeastern Maine is widely considered the most remote state park east of the Mississippi. The closest town to this wilderness park is about a 30-minute drive away in Millinocket, Maine. This state park also sits at the end of one of the most challenging sections of the Appalachian Trail, where one must walk 100 miles through a wilderness where there are no roads at all. At the end of it lies close to 210,000 acres of wilderness at Baxter State Park.

Mount Katahdin in Baxter State Park in Maine. This land in northeastern Maine dates back to the end of the last ice age, 12,000 years ago, when the Laurentide ice sheet began to melt. This ice sheet was also responsible for the creation of the Great Lakes much further west. Humans first came to this area around 11,000 years ago when it was still a tundra.

The climate here would gradually warm up, and the tundra gave way to spruce and fir forests. Many of the trees one will find here are spruce, birch, hemlock, and balsam. The most noteworthy feature in this park is Mount Katahdin, a 5,269-foot-tall feature that is part of the Appalachian Mountains.

Katahdin’s name comes from the Penobscot Native Americans. It translates to “The Greatest Mountain.” Despite this name, the Penobscot people tended to avoid the summit itself, as they believed a spirit known as Pamola lived up there and would eat intruders. They would leave him sacrifices to prevent him from coming down and attacking people. Pamola’s name is still preserved in one of the mountain’s summits, Pamola Peak. The Penobscot people today live at the Penobscot Indian Island Reservation in Maine, and visit this sacred mountain to this day.

Europeans would first reach the top of Mount Katahdin in 1804, when Massachusetts commissioned Charles Turner Jr. to survey the land. His native guides led him up the mountain but stopped before the summit. He went up without them and reached the summit on August 13, 1804.

Afterwards, the mountain attracted attention from naturalists such as Henry David Thoreau, and later on artists such as Frederic Edwin Church, who were inspired by its views.

Sandy Stream Pond and North Basin in the fall, Baxter State Park, Northern Maine The park itself bears the name of the man who worked to create it, Percival P. Baxter. He would serve as governor from 1921 to 1925, and in the 1930s he began to work to preserve these forests of Maine, which he had grown up in as a young child. He purchased 6,000 acres of land and Mount Katahdin in 1930, and would then donate it to the state under one condition, that the land be kept as a wilderness.

He would continue to acquire land and give it to Maine until 1962. Others would follow in his footsteps, with additions made in the 1990s and 2000s until it reached its current size.

Baxter put in place a trust fund of close to $7 million to maintain the park. In addition, he determined that the Commissioner of Maine Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, Director of the Maine Forest Service, and the Attorney General would be the three main officials to manage the park. They also work alongside a citizen committee called the BSP Advisory.

Baxter State Park, Maine, Knife’s Edge Trail to Mount Katahdin. About 156,874 acres of Baxter State Park are managed as a wildlife sanctuary. The 29,537-acre Scientific Forest Management Area occupies the park’s northwest corner. In total, about 52,628 acres of the park are open to hunting and trapping, including the Scientific Forest Management Area, although moose hunting is prohibited.

The biggest landmark in Baxter State Park is Mount Katahdin itself. To protect the mountain, the park has a Katahdin Trailhead Pass system. Hikers can reserve these passes, which are meant to prevent too much traffic, ahead of time. From there, they can access one of several trailheads, such as Abol, Cathedral, which passes over three rock buttresses, and Hunt, which passes by Katahdin Stream Falls. These hikes are known to be very strenuous, with elevation gains of close to 4,000 feet.

There are more than 220 miles of trails throughout the park, which cross over to more than 40 peaks and other geological formations. For example, from the northern Matagamon Gate, one can explore volcanic summits on the Traveler Loop Trail or the Mount Coe-South Brother-North Brother Loop, ascending three mountains.

The park also has easier hiking trails, going over to Katahdin Lake, up the 3,110-foot-tall South Turner Mountain, or the 1,842-foot-tall Sentinel Mountain.

The approach to Springer Mountain, the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. The Appalachian Trail follows much of the length of the ancient Appalachian Mountains. It is a 2,197.9-mile trail that passes through several national parks, forests, and many other landmarks.

The history of the trail dates back to the early 1900s when conservationist and scientist Benton MacKaye began pushing for a trail stretching across the Appalachian Mountains. That trail became a reality in 1923 and was gradually expanded until 1937, when workers completed its final unfinished section between Spaulding and Sugarloaf mountains in Maine. Its northern terminus was at the summit of Mount Katahdin, about 15 miles within Baxter State Park. The man who would lead the final push was named Myron Avery, who served as the chairman of the Appalachian Trail Conference.

The trail begins at Springer Mountain in Georgia and goes north to North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire before ending in Maine.

However, to get there, hikers have to go through the 100 Mile Wilderness, which runs between Monson, Maine, and Abol Bridge. Hikers often cite this wilderness as being especially challenging, as there are no public roads or easy ways to get help. It is the longest wilderness section of the entire trail, and hikers commonly carry seven to ten days’ worth of food to make it through. The land around it is quite important, as it is a large boreal forest which is a part of the Maine Woods Initiative.

For Baxter, this park was meant to preserve something that would last. He would note that humans’ “works are short-lived. Buildings crumble, monuments decay, wealth vanishes. But Katahdin in all its glory, forever shall remain the mountain of the people of Maine.”

This mountain is important to all the people of Maine, including the natives who still consider it a sacred place. Beyond just people from Maine, Baxter State Park also represents the end of a long, hard, and rewarding journey for hikers who follow the Appalachian Trail across a 100-mile wilderness in Maine to the top of Mount Katahdin. This remote section of the eastern U.S. is worthwhile just for the views alone, whether arriving as a seasoned hiker or just as a sightseer.