page_title: Moosehead Lake
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Moosehead Lake / History
caption_attribution_description: English: John Dunn and his party of hunters built Camp Russell, an outpost at Russell Pond at the base of Russell Mountain, some fifteen miles north of Northeast Cove on Moosehead Lake, Maine. Dunn and his hunters likely took a steamship to the north end of Moosehead Lake, and traveled by packhorse for another day to reach their remote camp. Retouched by MarmadukePercy
context_page_description: Moosehead Lake is the largest lake in the U.S. state of Maine and the largest mountain lake in the eastern United States. Situated in the Longfellow Mountains in the Maine Highlands Region, the lake is the source of the Kennebec River. Towns that border the lake include Greenville to the south and Rockwood to the northwest. There are over 80 islands in the lake, the largest being Sugar Island with the almost as large Deer Island to the west.
context_section_description: Mount Kineo, with 700-foot (200 m) cliffs rising straight up from Moosehead Lake, has attracted visitors for centuries, from early American Indians (Red Paint People), to later tribes seeking its rhyolite to make stone tools, Penobscots and Norridgewocks, the Abenaki bands who battled here with their enemy the Mohawks, to 19th-century "rusticators" traveling by railroad and steamboat and today's hotel guests. Various species dwell among its cliffs and talus slopes, including peregrine falcons and rare plants.
  The Moosehead region includes the headwaters of the Kennebec, the West Branch of the Penobscot, the Piscataquis, the Pleasant, and the Saint John rivers. Henry David Thoreau and other 19th-century visitors remarked on the beauty of the area. The region has a large moose population; moose outnumber people 3:1. However, the name of the region derives from the remarkable similarity between maps of the lake and an antlered moose.
  Henry David Thoreau described the lake as “...a gleaming silver platter at the end of the table.”
caption: Hunters at Camp Russell, northeast of Moosehead Lake, 1888
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