Nominate your favorite Maine businesses for Best of Maine!

Can You Name This Lake and the Town Where It’s Found?

It is located in the former “Snowshoe Capital of the World.”

Where in Maine | Down East Magazine
Photographed by Benjamin Williamson

You may hear this serpentine lake called by one of two names. The first is simply the name of the town that surrounds it, known for shoes and summer folk and beloved by many a camp owner. The other has Algonquin roots, and at least one old source translates it as “a strange shining, then fading light.” If that’s a reference to the sunsets over the water, the lake’s pre-Columbian visitors weren’t the last to admire them. “Gorgeous . . . wonderful . . . pleasing to the eye,” one 1904 tourism tract called them, particularly recommending the view from the steamboat. “There is no lake in all the world with better advantages. Even the lakes of Scotland are not superior to it.”

Of course, the Scottish lochs don’t much freeze over, whereas winter falls heavy on this region. That’s never bothered the locals, though, not in the former “Snowshoe Capital of the World.” This time of year, you’ll find bunches of them snowshoeing, snowmobiling, and ice fishing on the lake they love — whatever they call it.

This month’s Where in Maine is sponsored by


Submit your answer below. We’ll feature our favorite letter in an upcoming issue — and send the winner a Down East wall calendar.