History Lessons from a Walk in the Maine Woods

 

I recently got back from a wonderful month in Maine. My husband and I rented a house right on a lake, and we spent a good portion of our time in the water. We kayaked, and my husband learned to paddle board, which turned into great fun when the grandkids discovered they could use their Popa’s board as a diving platform.

But we did other things, as well, including touring a charming, small railroadmuseum, running in two local races (a 4^th of July 10K sponsored by L.L. Bean in Freeport, and a 5 miler that was part of the Yarmouth Clam Festival), visiting some beautiful beaches, touring the site where Poland Springs water comes from, eating a lot of good seafood, and hiking on several trails. 

It was on one of those hikes that I learned some interesting bits of historical trivia that just might show up in one of my books someday.

The Suckfish Brook Conservation Area was an easy walk from our rental, and so we decided to give it a try despite its unappealing name. This 94-acre public natural space featured wetlands, a peat bog, and woodland walking trails. There was a small parking lot that might hold three or four cars, and had a nice map delineating all the trails within the area. We picked a combination of trails that would lead us through several different ecosystems. We were surprised to find blueberries growing along the trail. I thought blueberries didn't ripen until much later in the season. 

My first history lesson came from a sign that was very close to the beginning of the trail. 

The sign explained that in New England, old-growth white pines grew very tall and straight. Some were over 200 feet tall. This made them ideal single-piece masts for massive sailing ships. During Colonial times, British officials marked the largest and best of these trees with three hatchet marks, creating a symbol known as “The King’s Broad Arrow.”

Under the King’s Broad Arrow policy, those trees, which were 24 inches or wider in diameter, were reserved for use by the crown.

The sign quickly caught my attention because I had seen a similar mark while hiking Hadrian's Wall, in Northern England, during the summer of 2025.  Although carved into stone, the mark we had seen in England also had three lines that radiated outward. We saw this mark in Housesteads, an old Roman fort along the wall, where our very informative tour guide, Allen Woods, pointed it out to us.  He explained that the symbol marked royal property and government equipment. After Allen had pointed it out, we saw this symbol several other times. It's funny how things show up once you know to look for them. 

One of the earliest known uses of the symbol in an official capacity seems to come from 1383, when it is recorded that a butler of King Richard II used a seal with that mark on it to designate that a barrel of wine was reserved for the king's use. The record states that the butler "signo regio capiti sagitte consimili signavit," or marked it with the royal sign like an arrowhead.

Over time, the symbol became particularly associated with the Board of Ordnance, and later the War Department and the Ministry of Defence. When Allen showed us the symbol, he said that it marked an old military road, and that the same symbol appeared on many other pieces of military equipment.

In America, the King’s Broad Arrow policy led to one of the first acts of forceful, coordinated resistance against British rule in New England. The Pine Tree Riot was an armed insurrection in Weare, New Hampshire in 1772, a full year before the Boston Tea Party. Governor John Wentworth sent had sent British colonial officers to mill towns to look for trees that had been cut down even though they bore the king’s mark. Most mill owners paid the fines levied against them, but one, Ebenezer Mudgett, refused . He rallied a group of local townspeople, who beat the officers with switches, cut off their horses' manes and tails, and forced the humiliated men to ride out of town through a gauntlet of jeering residents. The rioters were eventually arrested but a sympathetic local judge fined them only one shilling each. The riot showed the colonists’ willingness to use violence against British authorities in order to protect their economic freedom.

I was intrigued by the connection between the Maine woods and England's northern borders. It gave me a lot to think about. And I had never heard of the Pine Tree Riot before. 

I got a second jolt of history when we came across another sign about 3/4 of the way through our hike. This sign stood next to one of the many stone walls that ran through the woods. It explained that this wall once marked the edge of a field, and that a person could tell what kind of field by looking at the size of the stones within the walls. Pastures were delineated by large stones. The walls around crop land had smaller stones, picked from the earth so that plows wouldn’t buck on them. Every year, frost heaves would bring new stones to the surface, and these stones were added to the walls.

As Maine became more populated, the forests were leveled to build houses, cook food, and warm hearths. By the end of the 1700s, most of the massive old-growth mast trees along the southern Maine coast were gone, along with most other trees. In 1880, when Maine’s agricultural economy reached its peak, 64,309 farms covered over 6.5 million acres. Trees were relegated to wood lots and the area around farm houses. But as the nation grew, its agricultural centers moved west. By 1940, there were only 39,000 farms left in Maine, and trees were growing in the abandoned fields. Today, nearly 90% of Maine’s land has reverted to forest.

Of course, none of the trees in Maine bear the King's Arrow any more. But its forests are veined with the crumbling remnants of stone walls. I know I will never be able to pass one of these walls again without assessing the size of its stones and determining whether the field it once enclosed held crops or pasture, and I will always wonder about the people who built those walls. Someday, I might be able to tell their story. 

Jennifer Bohnhoff is the award winning author of historical and contemporary fiction for middle school
through adult readers. She lives high in the mountains of central New Mexico, but often visits one of her children, who lives in Maine.

You can read more about her and her books on her website.