Overview
Flagstaff Lake spreads beneath the Bigelow Range in Maine's western mountains, created in 1950 when Central Maine Power's Long Falls Dam flooded the Dead River valley and with it the villages of Flagstaff and Dead River — communities of farms, church, school and store whose residents were bought out and moved, houses burned or hauled away before the water rose; the name reaches back to Benedict Arnold's 1775 Quebec expedition, which raised a flagstaff here on its epic march. Drawdowns still bare the old roads, bridge abutments and cellar holes in the flats, drawing walkers to the drowned lanes. Lake telling is Maine-quiet: a church bell over the water, lights along the vanished main street on still nights, figures on the exposed roads at drawdown, and voices in the coves — undocumented, elegiac, the valley's displaced remembering, honoured first as documented loss. The lake is big, cold backcountry water; boating and shore rambles take precautions. Present Flagstaff as Maine's drowned-valley story — Arnold's march, a power company's flood — its bell the lake's patient toll.