trekked 26 miles on foot through the woods and snow to Rangeley Lake with all of their possesions on two "moose sleds" and the baby strapped into a large wooden bread mixing trough. They reportedly survived on fish and game and lived quite "primitively". The following year, two other families settled near the lake, and thus began the "Lake Settlement."

Upon his father's death, James Rangeley, Jr. inherited his share of land in Maine and proceeded to buy out the other partners. In 1825, James Jr., later known as Squire Rangeley and his family traveled the single horse trail from Madrid, intent upon making this wild place their home. About 12 years later the area was renamed "Rangeley" on a new state map. (Maine became a state in 1820.) By 1840 the population had grown to 39 families.

Rangeley was a small but thriving farming community with a sideline trade in lumber...yet there was a spot at the confluence of the Rangeley and Kennebago Rivers, called Indian Rock, where Brook Trout weighing in excess of eight pounds could be caught. Sport fishermen from Providence, Rhode Island and New York City discovered this spot in the early 1840s, but it wasn't until the 1860s that Rangeley's reputation as a fisherman's paradise really took hold...more >>