The History of Allagash, Maine

HISTORY
The town of Allagash was established in 1886. The first people to settle in Allagash were Sara Ann, Anna and John Gardner and William Mullins. Their two brothers, John Webster and Joseph Bradford accompanied them, along with sister's six children. Their arrival to the area is dated 1838. On the third of December 1840, Anna and John Gardner had the first child to be born in Allagash. The boy was named Isaac Gardner.

Their trip to the Allagash area started in Campbellton (the Sugarloaf Mountain area). The families canoed up the Restigouche River, dropped down into the Wagan River at its confluence with the Restigouche, than poled southwest up the Wagan to an area maintained by the Government to keep bushes cleared for portage from the Wagan to the Wangases stream that joined the Grand River. The Grand entered the St. John River a few miles below St Leonard, N.B., Canada. A quote from Thoreau in 1857, on his Allagash River trip sheds more light on the waterway used from the Bay of Chaleur to the St. John River. "It appears that this party of hunters were going our way, but much farther down the Allagash and St. John and then up some other stream, across to the Retigouche and the Bay of Chaleur, to be gone six weeks."

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