Driving through northern Maine can feel as though you're trespassing on the private fiefdoms of the logging companies; only Baxter State Park is public land. However, you're pretty much free to hike, camp and explore anywhere you like, so long as you let people know what you're doing. The scenery is pretty much the same everywhere, although to experience what Thoreau described in his Maine Woods , you'll need to leave your car at some point and set off into the backwoods.

Five miles north of Brownsville Junction on Hwy-11, an inconspicuous left turn leads to the Katahdin Iron Works at Silver Lake (summer daily 9am-5pm), built in 1843. It's remarkable how little remains of what one hundred years ago was a thriving industrial community: one solitary brick oven and the tower of the blast furnace, stark and forlorn at the end of a few miles of gravel track. In good summer weather it's possible to continue along the track across the hills to Greenville.

Further north, MILLINOCKET is a genuine company town, built on a wilderness site by the Great Northern Paper Company in 1899-1900 as the "magic city of the North." Public curiosity was so great that three hundred people came on a special train from Bangor to see what was happening. Since then it has produced massive quantities of newsprint, but in 1990 the company was taken over by the Georgia Pacific Corporation, and although the townspeople made a killing from cashing in their stocks, their homes are almost unsaleable, and their jobs may well not last.

Next to Millinocket Lake , ten miles northwest, the splendidly ramshackle old Big Moose Inn (Box 98, Millinocket, ME 04462; tel 207/723-8391, ) with adjacent campground ($10 per person) makes a great place to stay; it also has some four-person cabins ($34-38). Unicorn Expeditions (tel 207/725-2255 or 1-800/864-2676) uses the inn as a base for day rafting and kayaking expeditions, and there are dogsled races in February and March, as well as seaplane tours. A more standard place to stay is the clean Katahdin Inn , 740 Central St/Hwy-11 (tel 207/723-4555 or 1-877/902-4555, ; $50-75), which provides a free continental breakfast.

Approaching the southern end of Baxter State Park itself, on a clear day the 5268ft peak of Mount Katahdin is visible from afar. The park was the single-handed creation of former Maine Governor Percival P. Baxter, who, having failed to persuade the state to buy Katahdin and the land around it, bought it himself between the 1930s and 1960s and deeded it bit by bit to the state on condition that it remain "forever wild."

The area's chamber of commerce resides in Millinocket at 1029 Central St (tel 207/723-4443, ); the Baxter State Park Authority is at 64 Balsam Drive (tel 207/723-5140).

Baxter State Park

• Baxter State Park

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