A Walking Tour of Millinocket Stream,
By Ken Anderson

Intrigued by complaints that were made, during the May 22 town meeting, about the condition of Millinocket Stream, I decided to see for myself. As it was a rather nasty walk, I thought I’d take my camera and share it with anyone else who might be interested.

This Millinocket Stream is the outlet for Millinocket Lake and a tributary of the West Branch of the Penobscot River. It flows from the southern end of Millinocket Lake, through Millinocket, past the mill, and empties into the West Branch of the Penobscot south of town. It shouldn’t be confused with another Millinocket Stream north of Baxter State Park, which is the outlet for another Millinocket Lake and a tributary of the Aroostook River.

Historically, the stream has never been the sort of a place where people swam and children played about in the water. Before residences were connected to the municipal sewer, raw sewage was dumped directly into the stream. And then there’s the mill. Once the largest paper mill in the world, Great Northern Paper Company was a vital and stable employer throughout most of its history, which spanned more than a century. In recent decades, as the mill passed through a number of corporate hands, companies such as Georgia-Pacific, Bowater, and Inexcon seem to have put the environment on the backburner as they struggled to turn a profit out of the paper industry in a state that has been decidedly unfriendly to industry.

Millinocket Stream has been a mess for as long as the town of Millinocket has been in existence, but the mill was here before the town. I think that it’s fair to presume that before the paper mill, the stream was not the ugly, smelly, polluted mess that it is now.

This afternoon, I walked the length of Millinocket Stream from the Cherry Street bridge to the Central Street bridge, crossed in the water, then walked back on the side adjacent to the Granite Street Elementary School. Later, after showering and changing into something that didn’t smell so bad, I walked the east shore of the stream north from the Central Street bridge to the 2nd Street bridge leading to the school. I crossed in the water there, but decided to take the sidwalk back to my vehicle.

Join me on a photographic walking tour of Millinocket Stream. Click the golden arrows on the left navigation bar to go forward or backward. It’s a long walk but I’ll keep you company.