"Presumably, the establishment of such a wilderness area, if it is to be meaningful, should include the Allagash River and adjacent land areas as a contiguous and well defined entity irrevocably dedicated to its maintenance in a wilderness state."

  -Senator Edmund S. Muskie, 1963

"There are no hundred miles in America quite their equal.  Certainly none has their distinctive quality"

  -U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

in My Wilderness East to Katahdin (1961)

LD 2077 WILL NOT RESOLVE DIFFICULT ALLAGASH ISSUES - click here to read more.

A National Treasure We Care About...

The Wild Allagash

• Created in 1966 by the Maine State Legislature
• Overwhelmingly approved by Maine voters with passage of a $1.5 million bond issue to "Develop the Maximum Wilderness Character of the Allagash Waterway"

• Through efforts initiated by Senator Edmund S. Muskie, designated a "wild" river area in 1970 under the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act–the first state-managed river in the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System

• As a designated wild river under the act, intended to be "generally inaccessible except by trail"

Restoring and Protecting Wilderness Character

• Over the years the waterway’s wilderness character has suffered from the incursions of roads, parking lots, and boat launches, bringing about interruptions in the view from the river and lakes, more noise, and less solitude.
• In 2003, Citizens to Protect the Allagash participated in and supported an agreement worked out by state agencies, organizations, and individuals to embark on a path that promises to begin the restoration of the "wilderness" character of the waterway.
• The challenge before us is to ensure that the agreement is implemented as a first but important step to ensure that the Allagash Wilderness Waterway will be managed as the people intended–as a wilderness.