Hidden in plain view

By DEIRDRE FLEMING, Portland Press Herald Writer
Copyright © 2003 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc. 

VIENNA — The red, purple and orange of the blueberry barrens atop Vienna Mountain this fall made the quiet, isolated patch of mountaintop seem like the Land of the Lost. As far as locals of Belgrade Lakes are concerned, it might as well be.

This time of year, the 5,400 acres of preserved land that surrounds the mountain and commercial blueberry fields is deserted. Mountain bike tracks show visitors come here, but you rarely encounter another using the thick woodland trails that lead uphill and off to five completely undeveloped ponds. It's hard to believe this vast area of protected forestland is just over an hour's drive from Portland and minutes from Augusta.

Since the Belgrade Regional Conservation Alliance started cobbling it together in 1998, the Kennebec Highlands has become the largest public conservation area in central Maine. Yet the 20 miles of cut woodland trails in the Kennebec Highlands get little use, said Dennis Phillips, an alliance founder.

Because the Highlands is nestled between Route 41 and Watson Pond Road, the land between it is little known, even though it sits, conspicuously, beside one of the state's busiest summer lake resort communities, the Belgrade Lakes region.

After using a $66,000 grant from the Land for Maine's Future to add trails and parking areas, the alliance is starting to get the word out that the Kennebec Highlands is open to the public. Two weeks ago, it held a celebratory hike to the summit of Round Top Mountain as a way to invite hikers to try the new three-mile trail up the mountain and the new parking lot near it.

About 30 people showed, but Phillips expects that newcomers to the Highlands will return. This summer, the alliance put in three parking areas, one leading up Round Top Trail, one leading to McIntire Pond and another leading to the Sanders Hill Trail, a 2.5-mile loop. McIntire Pond is a jewel for fishermen." It's everybody's secret trout pond," Phillips said. A true testament to the fishing hole is the tombstone there that tells "Big" Ed Fabian has "Gone Fishin."

Legend has it that Fabian asked that his ashes be spread over the pond. The Highlands also take in McGaffey Mountain and Round Top, which on a clear day, locals say, provide views of Mount Washington, Mount Blue, the Camden Hills and Katahdin." A number of people feel once people discover it, it will be a mountain biking mecca," Phillips said. "You can ride 21 miles and never cover the same trail." Alliance executive director Mike Little said before the parking areas were built this summer, the word of the Highlands merely trickled out. Without parking, alliance members didn't want to publicize the area, he said. Meanwhile, locals have enjoyed it.

Phillips goes into the Highlands every week, biking in the summer and skiing in the winter, but never alone. He has broken ribs while flying over potholes on his mountain bike, and the trails are miles from any of the homes in Rome, Vienna, Mount Vernon and New Sharon. Before he retired from the Department of Environmental Protection in 1998, Phillips said he used to commute from his home near Route 27, look out on the Highlands, and never stop to think the scenic view could change. Now, preserving the Highlands for the future seems a necessity for Phillips and the Belgrade Regional Conservation Alliance.

The Kennebec Highlands' isolated yet precarious location near Maine's populated areas make it a unique project for the land trust made up mostly of locals." The vagaries of real estate hadn't led to a lot of development in that area," said Tim Glidden, director of the Land for Maine's Future Program, which awarded the Highlands project almost $2 million in the past five years.

The effort to preserve the Highlands was first conceived in 1988, when the alliance first applied for a grant from the Land for Maine's Future. The failed attempt, Glidden said, was not indicative of the worth of the Kennebec project. It was more a question of timing." All through the middle 1990s, (Land for Maine's Future Program) almost had no money at all. We would not have dreamed about taking on a project like this," Glidden said.

Between 1998 and 2000, Glidden said the program awarded the alliance a total of $1,915,144 to help acquire 5,400 acres in the Kennebec Highlands that cost $2,452,730. The alliance raised the rest through private donations and grants, Little said. In 1998, there were 19 individual parcels of land owned by a number of timber companies and private landowners, Little said." One of the timber outfits wanted out," he said. "That was one of the things that got people thinking what could be put together."

Today, Glidden said, the Highlands is an oasis for central Maine. Finding undeveloped ponds and open, uninhabited woodland in central and southern Maine grows harder each year." The state doesn't have many holdings in that area," Glidden said. Eventually, Glidden said, 95 percent of the land in the Kennebec Highlands will be turned over to the Department of Conservation, which will manage the land.

Last year, the Land for Maine's Future Program awarded the Kennebec Highlands Project another $66,000 to develop public access. Glidden said if the alliance wasn't there to build the trails, the state would not have had time to do it. The local land trust's list of plans for the natural areas seems unending. The alliance is currently negotiating a 600-acre parcel that sits right in the center of the undeveloped land, at the top of Vienna Mountain where the commercial blueberry fields are. Allen's Blueberry of Ellsworth has not been a willing seller, but Little said the stalled negotiations are moving forward and the alliance is currently getting the land appraised.

Until the alliance acquires the land, Phillips said it has proposed trails routing hikers away from the blueberry fields. But, he also said the alliance "isn't going away" in its effort to buy the land. Such dogged determination is not readily apparent in the country landscape around the Kennebec Highlands.

Belgrade Lakes Village is a sleepy throwback to an earlier time, with the local bait shop centrally located and the brown wooden Day's Store sign advertising pizza sandwiches. Along the shore of Long Pond, the village has sweeping views of Round Top and Vienna Mountain. Save for one large white home, no development can be seen." That house was what got people motivated to protect the view," Phillips said. Here in the small village, the alliance office is also centrally located, and its members remain passionate despite setbacks to their project.

" So much land, so little time," Phillips said whimsically during a hike near the Highlands.

Staff Writer Deirdre Fleming can be contacted at 791-6452 or at: dfleming@pressherald.com