A Brief History of Maine’s Interconnected Trail System

Thanks to the ITS, it is now entirely feasible to hop on a sled in York County and wind up at the top of Aroostook County.

snowmobilers riding on Maine's Interconnected Trail System
By Joel Crabtree
Photos by Paul Cyr
From our January 2025 issue

Tom Nelson remembers when, in the mid-1960s, his Uncle Bus became the first snowmobile owner in the Piscataquis County town of Dover-Foxcroft. “You wouldn’t have to twist my arm too hard to go up and see Uncle Bus,” says Nelson, who grew up 50 miles south of there, in Winterport. “I’d be out there all afternoon riding that snowmobile.”

In those days, sleds were still a rarity. For starters, they were expensive, and they weren’t the most practical investment. Their gas tanks held only about five gallons, and as Nelson recalls, they were slow and unreliable. You’d be lucky if you traveled 50 miles without breaking down, he says. Then, even if you could make it 50 miles, where would you really go? There were no trails designated for snowmobiles.

snowmobile kicking up snow

Soon, though, others started following Uncle Bus’s lead. The owner of the local hardware store bought a snowmobile of his own so that he could go riding with Bus. Another friend got one, and another, until there was a small contingent of avid sledders in the community. Something similar was playing out in towns all over Maine, and in the late ’60s and early ’70s, local snowmobile clubs began to take shape, tight-knit groups that saw in sledding a new opportunity for wintertime recreating and socializing. 

“Those people started talking, and they said, ‘Jeez, it would be awful nice if we could create a trail network to get from here to there,’” Nelson says. Club members took the initiative, piecing together a network of trails for themselves. In Winterport, for instance, where Nelson had started riding his own sled, they knew they couldn’t cross the river to Bucksport, but they could at least start to connect the dots in their own town. Asking permission to ride on abandoned old town roads and open fields, they could generally get around pretty well. 

The networks continued to grow, but they often didn’t see much maintenance. “Those trails were rougher than hell,” Nelson says. “The more you rode them, the rougher they got.” Sledders found a solution by building homemade pipe drags to hitch to the back of their sleds, smoothing the trails as they rode. Plus, club members started going out in the fall, before sledding season, to improve trails by building bridges and clearing brush. 

Soon enough, the clubs began to talk. The Winterport club connected with the Hampden club, and they linked their trails. “We’d get a bunch of friends together, and we’d go from Winterport to Hampden to Newburgh to maybe Etna or Dixmont and make a loop,” Nelson recalls. “If we did that loop it was like, wow, that is a big friggin’ day.”

Nelson and other members of these increasingly connected clubs would hand-draw maps and post them in their clubhouses, to make the system more accessible to newcomers. Plus, the Maine Snowmobile Association had formed in 1968, and with the help of the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands, it led a concerted effort to establish a statewide trail network, spanning both public and private land (a 1979 state law that shields landowners from injury liability when people use their property for recreation aided the cause). In 1982, the Interconnected Trail System officially opened with a dedication ceremony in Eustis. 

Initially, the ITS consisted of 1,900 miles. More than 40 years later, the primary trails cover 4,000 miles across Maine and provide access to another 10,000 miles of secondary trails. It’s now entirely feasible to hop on a sled in York County and wind up at the very top of Aroostook County, or to start out in easternmost Maine and chart a course for westernmost Maine.

As for Tom Nelson, he estimates that he’s owned about 70 sleds since the ’60s. “I’ve always ridden,” he says. “It’s one of the things I enjoy the most.” He has also served as trail master for a few different clubs, and he still travels at least a couple of thousand miles every year, inspecting the state’s snowmobile trails. 

snowmobile trail in the evening

Trail Mix

Travelers on the ITS support a range of local businesses — gas stations, inns, restaurants — often in parts of the state that are otherwise sleepy in the winter. One of the most recent trailside additions, the Pines Grill, in Monticello, debuted just off ITS 86 last year. Inside the cozy lodge at the Wilderness Pines Campground, the restaurant tends to offer both menu staples and specials, and dishes are consistently hearty: burgers, prime rib, poutine — food that’ll warm you right up. Plus, a cup of coffee costs 25 cents, which is a pretty good reason in its own right to come in from the cold. 83 West Conroy Lake Rd., Monticello. 207-538-4500.

From our special “Winter Wonder” feature, our guide to the people, places, gear, and more making it possible to have an amazing Maine winter. Find a few “Winter Wonder” stories here on the website, and pick up a copy of our January 2025 issue to read them all!

Down East magazine, February 2025

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