Aroostook County’s long, cold winters leave some with dreams of moving south, and no doubt rural, northern communities everywhere have winter hardships and risks.
Yet northern Maine is lucky to have so many days, places and ways to enjoy winter outdoors, along with a history of skiing for necessity and fun.
While generations of Native Americans and Europeans in North America relied on snowshoes, the Swedish immigrants who settled in Aroostook County and founded New Sweden in 1870 brought with them skiing — a way of winter travel never before seen in most of New England.
The Maine legislator and diplomat William Thomas, who recruited the Swedes amid the the state’s population loss after the Civil War, provided the first account of skiing in the Northeast, describing school-bound youngsters “slipping over the snow on skidor, Swedish snow-shoes.”
What is now a multi-billion global industry and a staple of Maine’s economy started as a “utilitarian way to get around in the winter,” said Glenn Parkinson, author of “First Tracks: Stories from Maine’s Skiing Heritage”.
“The skis were long, made from wood, had a leather toe loop, and couldn’t be turned too well, which was fine for travelling on snow-covered dirt roads,” Parkinson said last February while in Presque Isle for the the World Cup Biathlon, the international cross country skiing and sharpshooting competition. The skis of the 1880s were made from ash and other hardwoods, steam-treated to create camber for buoyancy, and paired with a single pole.
Parkinson points to Frederick Jorgensen, a Swede who arrived in Maine in 1882 and put that basic ski setup to good use in his 25 years as a game warden. Jorgensen was recruited after working on a ditch-digging crew for the Fish and Game Commission, defending himself against a bully and wielding a birch pole to ward off a gang attacking him.
Jorgensen was selected for his courage to police poachers — who scared off many a warden and at least once left dynamite in Jorgensen’s camp fire — and he found solace and solitude working outdoors. “I thought to myself it was so beautiful I’d rather be in the Maine woods that in the best city in the world,” Jorgensen wrote in his 1937 memoir, ”25 Years a Game Warden”.
Jorgensen joined the Warden Service in 1902, and was sent to the northwestern Maine town of Wilson’s Mills, where skis had still likely never been seen before — creating “a great sensation,” Jorgensen wrote.
“There was a crowd assembled at the hotel, and the skis came in for a good deal of ridicule. We argued the merits of snowshoes versus skis in deep snow, so I suggested ‘Let’s settle it right now. We’ll go to the post office and back, and the one who gets back first gets one of Mrs. Flint’s fresh mince pies.’ One fellow who was an extra good snowshoe runner said ‘O.K. I’ll bet five dollars on top of that that I win.’ … He made one condition, that I go on the outside of the road, not in the tracks. Well, we started our half-mile race, and by the time the poor fellow had reached the Post Office, I was nearly back to the hotel.”
Jorgensen recalled that his ski tracks could act “as if a loudspeaker announced over the countryside, ‘The Warden is Coming,’” and he sometimes used snowshoes to blend in. But his ski tracks also had a kind of preventative effect, with poachers put “on notice” and Jorgensen often being fast enough to catch them, according to Parkinson.
Swedes shared the sport of skiing with others in the region, and the use of skis grew across the state and New England for both utility and pleasure. In some communities in northern Maine, school students would snowshoe or ski to school into the 1950s, before plows were able to clear all of the country roads, while skiing as a recreation grew before and after World War II.
In 1916, the Poland Spring Resort started offering cross country skiing lessons and trails, and the 1920s and 1930s brought the start of winter carnivals held in towns and cities across Maine, with jumping competitions, high school cross country races and grand ski marathons, including the 200-mile Bangor to Caribou race of 1936. That era also saw the beginning of the small, community ski hills, often with tractor-powered tow ropes, such as Quoggy Jo Ski Hill in Presque Isle, which opened at what is now Aroostook State Park in 1932.
Parkinson, a Vermont native who worked at a number of Maine ski resorts, was skiing at Quoggy Jo (now located at another hill on the other side of Presque Isle) when he was visiting last year. “I think by 40 years I was the oldest guy there,” Parkinson said. “It was really fun to see all those 8- and 10-year-old kids out there, and just having fun. That’s where I learned how to ski. Those local areas are really important.”
In the 1990s, when Parkinson was writing “First Tracks,” he became fascinated with the rich history of Maine’s skiing and said he thinks it’s a history that should be more widely appreciated.
“I saw some photos from the ‘20s and ‘30s, and it was a piece of skiing that I had never seen before,” Parkinson said.
Maine also had a vibrant wooden ski manufacturing industry centered in South Paris, which did not survive the transition from wood to plastics and fiberglass in the 1950s and ‘60s, although today the Gray-based company Lucid Skis makes wooden, metal-edged backcountry and downhill skis that Parkinson said “ski really well.”
While western Maine is home to the largest ski mountains and most challenging backcountry terrain, Aroostook County retains a strong culture of both alpine and cross country skiing. The County especially has some of the most reliable winters for cross country skiers, who can find trail networks around many schools, the Chase Farm in Ashland (a private Christmas tree farm where the Ashland cross country team practices that’s also open to the public), and the expansive, more challenging trails of Aroostook State Park, the Fort Kent Outdoor Center and the Nordic Heritage Center in Presque Isle. Skiers can also use Aroostook County’s vast snowmobile trails and find mellow downhill runs in the rolling landscape of farm fields.
“Skiing is a part of life here,” said Ernie Easter, a retired New Sweden teacher who now leads the local after-school ski club on trails at the school’s grounds.
Easter, who in college traversed the Bigelow Mountain section of the Appalachian Trail on cross country skies, is among a number of Aroostook County baby boomers and retirees who have not let age slow them down.
“Skiing is a lifelong sport,” Easler said. “It is something you just don’t stop.”
