“Forest Lodge,” Former Home of Maine Author Louise Dickinson Rich, Awaits Next Owner, Next Chapter

For the first time in four decades, historic Rangeley Lakes landmark is for sale

Rapid River location on world-class native brook trout fishery marks property for fly-fishermen

RAPID RIVER, MAINE In 1942, from her home at Forest Lodge on the legendary Rapid River, Louise Dickinson Rich captured the world of log drives, Maine guides, native brook trout, and majestic wild lakes in her national best-seller, We Took to the Woods. The book described a place apart, a place that only a privileged few could experience first-hand. We are proud to offer this once-in-a-lifetime experience in a unique property that includes Rich’s original 1875 two-story lodge, a c.1920 workshop, a newer sport’s cabin, and 300+/- feet fronting one of North America’s premier trophy rivers for brook trout and salmon. Thousands of acres of protected forestland — including the abutting 25,000-acre Umbagog National Wildlife Refuge — surround the compound in a vast, pristine watershed in the storied Rangeley Lakes region of western Maine.

This is not simply a real estate listing — it is a living, disappearing part of Maine history on a river of nationally-recognized ecological and fly-fishing significance. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, “Forest Lodge” and its stunning location have been featured in glossy magazines and in local and regional television programs. Beyond the readers of Louise Dickinson Rich’s books, generations of Maine schoolchildren have made field trips to the site, and serious fly-fishermen from around the world have made pilgrimages here in pursuit of the largest native brook trout south of Quebec and Labrador. Its sale — after nearly a half-century of family ownership, reluctantly put on the market by an owner with health issues — will be of deep interest to many, and in some circles will be national, even historic, news.
Asking price: $1.3 million

The current long-term owner, registered Maine Guide and raconteur Aldro French, is available for interviews. To contact him directly: aldromaine@hotmail.com

For real estate information contact:
Gloria A. Hewey
207-399-8553 (Cellular) | 207-795-9671 (Direct)
gloriahewey@masiello.com
www.gloriahewey.masiello.com

The Masiello Group/Better Homes & Gardens Real Estate
155 Center Street
Auburn, ME 04210

“Between two ranges of mountains, the Boundary Mountains and the Blue Mountains, lies a high, wild valley, the basin that holds the Rangeley Lakes. The country is criss-crossed with ridges, dotted with swamps and logans, and covered with dense forest. I like to think of the lakes coming down from the North of us like a gigantic staircase to the sea. Kennebago to Rangeley to Cupsuptic, down they drop, level to level, through short, snarling rivers; Mooselukmeguntic to the Richardsons to Pond-in-the-River, and through Rapid River to Umbagog, whence they empty into the Androscoggin and begin the long Southeasterly curve back to the ocean. I like to say their names, and I wish I could make you see them…”

— Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods, 1942