On July 4th, 1949, the villages of Flagstaff and Dead River came together with current

residents and past for a celebration that they called Old Home Days.

I remember a celebration kind of like this in my main hometown, Old Hollowel Day.

It was a big deal in high school and it served as an unofficial class reunion in college.

There was a parade and food vendors and live music and a beer garden and fireworks after dusk.

Every year my town came together, and every year the same celebration.

But for Flagstaff and Dead River, they knew a celebration like this would never happen again, because the little villages of Flagstaff and Dead River were about to die.

Years of methodical planning and legislative action,

of deconstruction and relocation and clear-cutting,

of door-knockings from lawyers,

of man-made fires and packed trucks filled with personal

possessions finally culminated in a flood that would drown the small towns,

effectively erasing them from the map of Maine forever.

I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the day Dead River died, the ghost town beneath Flagstaff Lake, on Dark Down East. The land at the base of Bigelow Mountain to the banks of the Dead River

belonged to indigenous people before it was ever settled and became the tiny villages known as Dead River and Flagstaff plantations.

For thousands of years, a path from the Kennebec River through treacherous terrain and over steep ridges to the Dead River. the and white waters where the dead met the Kennebec.

Carrying boats across the 10-mile journey would have been an arduous endeavor, but the path became

the chosen route of Benedict Arnold and his army in 1775 as they trekked

towards the St Lawrence River and onward to Quebec City to carry out their attack.

As the local legend goes, the village earned the Flagstaff moniker after Benedict Arnold planted his Flagstaff at the campsite and raised the banner of the almost United States during the famous

march to Quebec. The name, although lacking originality, stuck. Seeking the rich soil of the Dead River floodplain and the

plentiful timber resources, the area was settled as Flagstaff, Bigelow, and Dead River Plantations in the 1800s, Flagstaff Plantation

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