The Pine Tree State GeoArt series will take you on a short trip not far from Stratton. The road is passable by most cars, but bikes and e-bikes are fine too. There is also about a mile or so of walking. Each cache will highlight something interesting about Maine.
Ghost trains of the Allagash
Deep in the heart of Maine’s Allagash region sit two ghost locomotives silently rusting in the wilderness. Only a few intrepid canoes, hikers and snowmobilers can see the hulking machines, miles from any road or railhead. The last of the great independent loggers, a Quebecois called King Ed Lacroix, put the ghost locomotives there.
Lacroix built a 13-mile railroad in the middle of the Allagash — some would call it nowhere — to haul pulpwood to Maine paper mills in Millinocket and East Millinocket.
When the locomotives cooled down for the last time in 1933, they were simply left in the woods. “Allagash canoodlers stop and stare in disbelief at the ninety-ton locomotive, still standing there, way to hell and gone off in the woods, and wonder what kind of men brought it there, and why,” wrote Robert Pike in Tall Trees, Tough Men.
Source: The New England Historical Society
If the trains are still standing there, the cache is at: N 45° 11.177′ W 70° 22.005′
If the trains have moved on, the cache is at: N 45° 11.155′ W 70° 22.055′