Old Canada Road National Scenic Byway

The Old Canada Road (US Route 201) leads travelers on a trip through time.  In towns like Bingham, classic clapboard homes line the streets and harken back to the boom days of the 19th and 20th centuries where lumber barons reigned over the surrounding forest.  In places like The Forks, modern day adventurers gather to camp in the backcountry and raft down swift-flowing rivers.

Route 201 follows old river trading routes of the Abenaki tribe.  Benedict Arnold made part of the interconnected network of waterways famous during the Revolutionary War when he led a tough band of soldiers up the Kennebec and Dead Rivers in flat bottom boats called bateaux to lay siege to the French settlement at Quebec.  Today the vitality of the region is bolstered by the area’s working forests, and Route 201 remains an important trade route linking Canada and the U.S. with the international border crossing at Sandy Bay.

Length:  78 miles

Travel Time:  3 hours

Recreation:  Backcountry camping, bicycling, boating, fishing, hunting, atving, snowmobiling, swimming, whitewater rafting, foliage viewing and wildlife watching.

Sidetrips:  Paddling in Jackman a section of the 720-mile Northern Forest Canoe Trail which traces ancient Native American trade routes from New York to Maine; whitewater rafting at The Forks where the Kennebec and Dead Rivers meet; boating on Wyman Lake; biking on the Solon-Bingham Rail Trail; take in the fresco murals at the South Solon Meeting House, Lakewood Theatre in Madison, one of the oldest continuous operating summer theaters in the U.S.; view the Skowhegan Indian, the largest sculpture of an Indian in the world.

Article courtesy of Old Canada Road Scenic Byway.