The story
Flagstaff took its name from Benedict Arnold's 1775 march to Quebec — his men raised a flagstaff at the bend of the Dead River — and for a century and a half it was a farming and logging village of a few hundred in the high Somerset woods.
Central Maine Power had held flowage rights since 1927, and in 1950 it exercised them: Long Falls Dam closed, and Flagstaff and neighboring Dead River plantation were cut, burned, and flooded beneath the new Flagstaff Lake. Residents moved buildings, exhumed cemeteries, and watched the water take the rest. In drought years the village roads and foundations surface along the lakebed — Maine's own returning ghost.
What remains today
Foundations and road traces visible at low water; the Flagstaff Memorial Chapel in nearby Eustis preserves relics, bell, and memory.
Questions from the field
- Can you see Flagstaff under the lake?
- In drawdown and drought years, yes — foundations and old roads emerge from the flats. Locals treat the exposures as the cemetery-adjacent ground they are.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at Flagstaff — GPS-verified visits earn an inked stamp.
File a field report
Road conditions, what's still standing, what's gone — your report joins the record.
Add photographs
Credited, dated, and preserved as part of Flagstaff's permanent record.
No field reports yet — sign in to file the first.
Sources consulted
- — Somerset County / Dead River Area Historical Society
- — Central Maine Power — Long Falls Dam records
- — Flagstaff Memorial Chapel, Eustis