On July 4, 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 Hollowell 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.

Members 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

oversteep ridges to the Dead River was known as the Great Carrying Place.

According to the Arnold Expedition Historical Society, this stretch that is now part of

the Appalachian Trail shortened the river to River Trip by 25 miles and avoided the

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