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Little Lyford Pond Camps was built around 1874, but guests today can enjoy some modern amenities.

By TUX TURKEL Staff Writer July 24, 2007

BOWDOIN COLLEGE GRANT EAST — Little Lyford Pond Camps was built around 1874 as a logging camp. It retains that feel today.

Eight rough-hewn log cabins are clustered in a tiny valley, a short walk from the water. Lit by gas and warmed by wood stoves, they have an authentic character.

But modern visitors won't pay to stay in the 19th century, so the Appalachian Mountain Club has made some concessions.

Guests eat in a handsome dining hall, with electric lights powered by the sun and wind. A new bath house, with showers, composting toilets and a propane-fueled sauna, are a big improvement over the privy. Skilled carpenters this summer are replacing the log sills on an old dining hall and converting it into a bunkhouse and gathering place for visitors.

These comforts are reinventing the experience at Little Lyford Pond Camps, while retaining its old-time flavor.

Little Lyford was one of dozens of logging camps in the region built to support the hundreds of men who came each season to saw logs, drag them onto frozen rivers and ponds, then drive them down river in the spring to waiting mills.

The loggers here drove virgin timber down the West Branch of the Pleasant River. In 1879, men spent six weeks blasting and widening the narrowest gorge in nearby Gulf Hagas -- called the Jaws -- from eight to 27 feet, according to a history of lumbering highlighted by the AMC.

As those harvesting practices waned, the camps became hunting and fishing retreats for sportsmen from Boston and New York. Their layouts were a legacy of their logging heritage -- a cluster of cabins set around a dining lodge, within sight of a lake or river.

The heyday of the sporting camp period at Little Lyford was chronicled between 1921 and 1946 by George Bliss, a Massachusetts sportsman who compiled his notes into a series of journals.

The AMC bought the property in 2003. The club has been slowly upgrading the camps and building hiking and skiing trails. The camps hosted 1,769 overnight guests when they opened in 2004.

This year, the club is projecting 2,400 visitors.

Summer rates that include meals and a cabin for an adult are $92 a night.

Staff Writer Tux Turkel can be contacted at 791-6462 or at:

tturkel@pressherald.com