Machias River

About

Machias River, Maine — 1777 Battle of Machias First Naval, 1830s-1870s Log Drives, 1971 Wild/Scenic 60-mi. The Machias River watershed was Passamaquoddy (Peskotomuhkati) territory long before contact. For thousands of years, the river's runs of Atlantic salmon, alewife, and eel sustained communities along its banks. The name Machias itself derives from the Passamaquoddy word meaning 'bad little falls,' describing the rapids near the river's mouth. The river's defining early chapter came on August 13–14, 1777, when the Battle of Machias — an amphibious assault on the Massachusetts town of Machias by British forces — was fought, remembered as the first naval engagement of the American Revolution in the North.

From the 1830s through the 1920s, the watershed was logged to support the regional timber industry and the railroad expansion of the 1860s through the 1910s. Local sawmills, logging drives, and downstream lumber operations were the major operators of the era, and lumbermen cutting the region's virgin forest dammed the Machias to drive timber downstream. The 1830s–1870s were the log-drives era. Large-scale logging wound down with the 1910 exhaustion of the old-growth stands, the 1915 start of state forestry conservation, and the 1930s establishment of state forests. The first comprehensive hydrological studies followed the timber boom: the USGS survey work of the 1870s–1890s, gauging-station establishment from the 1880s to the 1910s, and state streamflow assessments through the 1930s.

The river's character reflects its bog country. It runs dark and slow-steeping, stained by tannic acids from decaying plants in the bogs that line its banks. From its headwaters, the Machias flows as a chain of waters — from Fifth Lake down to First Lake — before gathering into a river. The upper corridor runs from Fifth Machias Lake to Third Lake, about 20 miles of headwater lakes and bogs, then continues 30 miles from Third Lake to Whitneyville as a Class I–II wilderness corridor. The final 25 miles, from Whitneyville to Machias, fall under tidal influence and salmon restoration. At the gauge, the river averages 680 CFS, with an optimal paddling range of 300 to 1,500.

The 20th century brought protection and repair. The 1971 Wild and Scenic River designation protected parts of the river. The Machias River Watershed Restoration Project defined the 1990s, and beginning in 2009, federal and state agencies removed multiple dams on the river system, reopening more than 40 miles of Atlantic salmon habitat. The Machias River Conservation Plan shaped the 2010s. Today the river is one of eight Maine rivers designated as critical habitat for endangered Atlantic salmon, and its water quality still bears the mark of historic logging and agricultural runoff.

The present-day Machias supports the Machias, East Machias, and Whitneyville economies and draws anglers as one of the premier trout streams in Maine, prized for brook trout and landlocked salmon. The Machias River Trust works to conserve the corridor. From its lake-chain headwaters through the bog country to Machias Bay, the river moves much as it once did — a restored blackwater channel carrying the memory of the forests that once crowded its shores.