On April Fool’s Day, 1919, Maine Governor Carl Milliken signed a law criminalizing French in public schools. The law was one of the most racist in our nation’s history—a government-led campaign of cultural extermination.

The Allagash River became the new battleground for Maine's culture war with the establishment of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway (AWW) in 1966.

"We believed in Santa Claus, though no one had ever seen him. No one would ever dress up like him. They'd tell us he lived in the clouds and climbed right down the stovepipe. He'd get as small as he'd like, or as big as he'd like."

Spanning four generations and more than one-hundred years, from the early-1870s to 1986, my family has farmed, logged, trapped, hunted, guided, and built sporting camps along Maine's Allagash River.

Born in 1887, Willard Jalbert, Sr., was one of 12 children raised in a remote farming and logging settlement three miles above Allagash Falls. The only access was by a horse-drawn towboat.