PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • May 11, 2020
May 11, 1966: The Maine Legislature passes the Allagash Wilderness Waterway statute, providing protection for northern Maine’s Allagash River, contingent on passage of a bond issue intended to supply funding for the protection. Maine voters approve the bond on Nov. 8. In 1970, the U.S. Department of the Interior designates the 92-mile, northward-flowing waterway as the first state-run component of the National Wild and Scenic River System. The 19th-century writer Henry David Thoreau explored the Allagash in 1857 in the company of his Concord, Massachusetts, friend Edward Hoar and Penobscot guide Joseph Polis.