CAMDEN — Two helicopters owned by the Maine Forest Service will be flying over the eastern slopes of Camden Hills State Park beginning later in the morning, Wednesday, Nov. 5. They are assisting the park with transporting sections of two new lean-tos to the top of Bald Rock Mountain in Lincolnville, where a crew will settle them into place at the summit where the old lean-tos, demolished last spring, once occupied.

The new lean-tos were built by the Amish in Unity, with design help from Coastal Mountains Search and Rescue member Matt Silverio, said Charlene Sunshine Hood, manager of Camden Hills State Park, as well as Birch Point and Owls Head state parks.

The Huey helicopter pilots and crews will arrive in Camden for a 9:30 a.m. meeting on a lower field behind Laite Construction on the Belfast Road (Camden) where the construction materials have been placed in advance of their flights.

The Forest Service estimated it will require 15 flights to move the floors, walls and roofs up to the Bald Rock Lookout, at the mountain's 1,200-foot summit.

Hood said the two shelters will replace the older ones that were constructed in the 1930s (one was rebuilt in the 1990s) for outdoor camping. 

They are, she said, basically Adirondack shelters with design improvements, such as a roof overhang extension to help guard against the weather. Like their predecessors, they will face east and be near a fire ring (although a campfire fire ban remains in effect given the current drought conditions, with only cookstoves allowed for the time being).

There are two outhouses up there, as well, she said.

"It is basically a primitive site," she said, offering the public a chance to get outdoors and enjoy the wilderness.

Bald Rock Mountain marks the northerly end of Camden Hills State Park, and its trail is accessible from the multi-use or Frohock Trail trails. Following erosion from the strong storms over the recent years, Bald Rock Trail was rebuilt this past summer courtesy of State Park Trails Supervisor Erik Brooks, said Hood. Brooks and a crew also made significant improvements at Tanglewood, with six bridges built or in construction progress, now.

The airlift on Wednesday will require temporary closure of the Mt. Battie access road and the Bald Rock Trail, said Hood. There will be park staff monitoring the trails and road during the day.

The Civilian Conservation Corps, a program of the New Deal, were working at parks in Maine from 1933 to 1942. In Camden, they were overseen by the National Park system from 1935 to 1941.

"The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a public works program that put over three million young men and adults to work during the Great Depression of the 1930s and 1940s in the United States," said the Maine State Archives, which keeps a record of the personnel who helped to build the trails, roads, stone steps and walkways, summit lookouts, and contributed to the beauty of the Maine parks.

In June 2022, Governor Janet Mills announced the allocation of a $50 million initiative toward improvements to its 48 state parks and preserves using funding from the Maine Jobs and Recovery Plan and distributed by the Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry.

Reach Editorial Director Lynda Clancy at lyndaclancy@penbaypilot.com; 207-706-6657