What follows appeared in the January 14,1897, edition of the RANGELEY LAKES newspaper. The paper regularly printed a feature called “Rangeley Recollections” which shared what the region was like some 50 years prior to 1897.Enjoy what follows and be sure to make some great Rangeley history of your own!
(Contemporary commentary shared in Italics). 
RANGELEY RECOLLECTIONS
It is sad to hear of the rapid diminution of the blue-backs in Rangeley waters. It is the result of many years of wholesale slaughter by means of net, grapnel and spear. It is, moreover, a salutary object lesson of the importance of restraining legislation affecting our inland fisheries. During the Octobers of fifty years ago and later these valuable little fish literally swarmed in the shallow outlet streams. The beds of these waters were covered with them and almost every Lake household larder was stocked with them, salted or smoked. Is there any possibility of so guarding the small remainder and promoting its increase as to replenish the waters of Rangeley with this estimable member of the finny tribe? Will some wise student of pisciculture answer?
(Sadly, the Blueback trout, actually a landlocked artic char …Salvilenous alpinus oquossa… is now only found in 14 ponds in Maine and only one in the Rangeley region, Long Pond, near Height of Land in Four Ponds Township.) 
Uncle Lem Quimby, who was an excellent woodcraftsman, always felt a little ashamed of getting lost in the woods one night between the Narrows and Haynes’ Landing. He was driving a herd of cattle from the Haynes place on the west shore of the great lake, and when he had forded the Narrows night was near at hand. (Prior to Upper Dam being built one could wade across the narrows between Mooselookmeguntic and Cupsuptic lakes). It was one thing to keep his own bearings and another to make the cattle keep theirs. Between the two jobs they were all “lost” together, and Uncle Lem, Steve Lowell and their companion were obliged to bivouac with little fire and nothing to eat. Their matches had failed, but a Piece of jacket sleeve lining, serving as a gun-wad, was ignited and from that a little blaze was started. But a lack of dry fuel kept it little to the end of the night, and the morning dawned upon a miserable trio. One of the three, however, partially relieved his condition by inducing a cow of the herd to stand still while he directed a stream of milk into his mouth. In the meantime, Uncle Lem explored and discovered that he had spent the night within musket shot of the carry between the lakes.
(Perhaps the only thing worse than being lost in the woods of Maine is to then discover that you were only a couple hundred yards away from the road you were looking for…AND having all your friends read about it. Poor Uncle Lem).  

(When the horse was the primary mode of transport there were many tales of their intelligence and in some cases the ability to get the job done without a rider or driver. There was a logging camp out by Kennebago that had a horse that could be loaded with lunch for a woods crew and would walk miles to where the crew was working, bring their lunch and return to camp on its own. Here below are more local examples of “Horse-sense”). 
I have told of the horse (“Old Chad”) who used to take some local children in a pung (small sleigh) to school, two miles away across Dodge Pond, and then go home alone. Another case of horse intelligence was that of a colt left to pasture at Mingo Point. He had been taken there on a log raft. He was the only horse there, and although the grass was good and abundant, he was lonesome and wistful of familiar “fields beyond the swelling flood.” One day soon after, he was seen emerging from the woods on the Deacon Lake place in a brisk trot and whinnying his delight to get back to home and kindred society. He had swum about half a mile from the Point to the landing whence he had been left.
(Senator William Pierce Frye was an influential U.S. Senator and skilled orator. His camp is still located on Eagle point where Cupsuptic and Mooselookmeguntic meet. It seemed he had recently let his opinions be known regarding the region’s dams and some “unsporting” fishing practices) …
I am glad that Senator Frye has spoken a word against plug-fishing (wooden lures often baited with worms, shiner or a smelt) and another, inferentially, against the dams that have operated not only to destroy much of the old-time beauty of the lake shores, but to restrict the free and healthful movement of the trout. The very thought of them suggests another word very much like dam. May their destruction come with the new century, or earlier. Business is business, but it is not all of life. There can be no doubt that, as an ardent lover of the region the Senator shares the keen regret of the old frequenters for the despoilment of the lake shores by artificially made high water, especially that bit of idyllic beauty. The pine-shaded burying ground whose sandy margin was kissed by the waves of Cupsuptic on the west and laved on the opposite by the stream from Indian Rock—the stream we named the unstickable name of “Kennebago.” (Well, it’s safe to say the name stuck). 

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