Big Duck Cove 1 (Moosehead Lake Shoreline Public Land)

public land records

Thin — A single weak source put this here. Treat the location itself as unconfirmed, not just the details.

Moosehead Lake Shoreline Public Land, Piscataquis/Somerset County. The guide's Fees section says, verbatim: "The Moosehead Lake Shoreline & Little Moose Public Land campsites are free of charge and available on a first-come, first-served basis." (The same paragraph says day-use fees apply at Mount Kineo State Park and that Lily Bay State Park charges day use and camping fees -- the two Lily Bay campgrounds printed in the same coordinate table, Dunn Point and Rowell Cove, are DELIBERATELY EXCLUDED from this import because they are fee campgrounds.) Facilities: "In addition to nearly 90 campsites at Lily Bay State Park, there are more than 90 other primitive campsites (with fire ring, picnic table and pit or vault toilet) on the shores of Moosehead. Some are accessible by road and many are accessible only by water: see map for details." *** ONE COORDINATE CAN BE MORE THAN ONE TENT SITE: the map labels each location with a site count in brackets -- Spencer Bay (35), Cowan West (18) and so on. Those counts could not be reliably tied to individual coordinates from the extracted text, so each row here is a camping LOCATION, not necessarily a single pitch. *** The guide says public lands on Mt. Kineo, Farm Island and Sugar Island are reachable by water only, and that "Cowan Cove and the Kelly Wharf site can be reached by vehicle"; for every other location the access mode is not stated in text and is left UNKNOWN here rather than guessed. MAINE PUBLIC RESERVED LANDS -- THE RULES THAT APPLY HERE. Fees: maine.gov/dacf/parks/about/public_reserved_lands.shtml (read 2026-08-14) says fees are "Generally not charged; In a few instances such as inside the North Maine Woods, Public Lands are managed in cooperation with neighboring landowners and fees are collected." Reservations: maine.gov/dacf/parks/camping/backcountry_camping.shtml says "Remote campsites are almost exclusively first-come, first-serve; reservations are not generally possible." STAY LIMIT, from the Bureau's own rules page maine.gov/dacf/parks/about/lands_rules.shtml: "No person shall camp, stay overnight or maintain any tent, camper, shelter, trailer or other camping unit on any public lands for more than fourteen days in any 45 day period, without the prior written permission of the Bureau." FIRE: open fires only in authorized campsites with fire rings, or under a Maine Forest Service permit; "Dead and down wood only may be used for campfires. No living trees shall be cut without the Bureau's prior written permission." Untreated firewood from outside Maine is BANNED -- buy it where you burn it. ABANDONED PROPERTY: BPL staff may take custody of personal property left unattended more than 3 days. Hunting and trapping are permitted on these lands in season -- wear blaze orange in the fall. Pets must be leashed and attended in campsites. WATER: BPL does not list drinking water at this site and none is claimed here. These are primitive sites on lakes, ponds and rivers; surface water is NOT represented as potable. Carry water in or treat it. COORDINATE PROVENANCE: latitude and longitude are copied from the "Campsite Latitude / Longitudes" table printed by the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands in Moosehead Lake Shoreline Public Land guide/map (https://www.maine.gov/dacf/parks/publications_maps/docs/moosehead-lake-shoreline-guide.pdf), downloaded and text-extracted 2026-08-14. This is the agency's own published coordinate for the named site -- it is NOT a geocode, NOT OpenStreetMap and NOT a field visit. No accuracy figure is published with the table. *** GIS CROSS-CHECK FAILED: the point sits 838 m from the nearest state-mapped parcel ("Days Academy Grant"), and a 250 m radius query against the full Maine Conserved Lands layer returned NO public parcel at all. BPL publishes this campsite in its own guide, so it is very likely real, but either the coordinate or the ownership layer is off. DO NOT PUBLISH WITHOUT CHECKING. *** Nearest town: Rockwood ~8.3 mi -- STRAIGHT-LINE distance to the nearest OpenStreetMap place=city/town/village, NOT a driving distance. In the North Woods the road in is routinely two to four times that on gravel. SEASON: BPL publishes no open/close date for these primitive sites on the guides read this fire. Access is over gravel logging roads that are generally passable June-October (the Machias River guide's words for comparable roads); mud season and snow close them. Confirm with the regional BPL office before a shoulder-season trip. Ingest 2026-08-14. --- NIGHTSHIFT REVIEW 2026-08-21 (fire 1220, leftover backlog) --- HOLDS UP, AND STRONGLY. Re-downloaded the Maine BPL Moosehead Lake Shoreline Public Land guide (https://www.maine.gov/dacf/parks/publications_maps/docs/moosehead-lake-shoreline-guide.pdf) this fire and re-extracted it. The Fees paragraph is still verbatim: 'The Moosehead Lake Shoreline & Little Moose Public Land campsites are free of charge and available on a first-come, first-served basis.' -- and still, in the same paragraph, day-use fees at Mount Kineo State Park and day-use AND camping fees at Lily Bay, so Dunn Point and Rowell Cove remain correctly excluded from this import. Facilities still verbatim: 'Moosehead Lake Shoreline's campsites are primitive. Each authorized site has a fire ring, picnic table, and a nearby privy.' COORDINATE RE-VERIFIED AGAINST THE AGENCY'S OWN TABLE: the guide still prints a 'Campsite Latitude/Longitudes' table, and this row's stored lat/lon matches the agency's published pair for this named site to 0 ft. Agency table entry: 'Big Duck Cove 1 45.7775, -69.6465'. NOT A DUPLICATE of the already-published 'Big Duck Cove 2' 0.251 mi away -- BPL's own table lists Big Duck Cove 1, 2 and 3 as three separate campsites with three separate coordinates (2 at 45.7739,-69.6458 and 3 at 45.7707,-69.6397), and 0.25 mi is simply the agency's own spacing along the cove. Checked explicitly this fire. OUTSTANDING ITEM, HONESTLY UNRESOLVED: the ingest's GIS cross-check failure could NOT be cleared this fire. I reached three Maine conserved-lands ArcGIS endpoints (gis.maine.gov Conserved_Lands and dep/Maine_Conserved_Lands MapServers, and the services1.arcgis.com Maine_Conserved_Lands FeatureServer) and all three returned no queryable layer list, so I could not re-run the parcel intersect. Nominatim reverse-geocoding is consistent with land but not probative (Big Duck Cove 1 -> East Middlesex Canal Grant Township; the two islands resolve only to Piscataquis County, which is normal for unorganised island territory). MY READ: a shoreline or island campsite falling outside or near the edge of a statewide upland parcel polygon is an expected artefact of that layer, not evidence the campsite is absent -- and the naming agency is the same agency that owns the land and publishes the coordinate. Approving on the strength of BPL's own name + coordinate + fee statement, with the parcel mismatch left on the record rather than explained away. No stay limit is printed in the guide; the Bureau's rules-page limit of fourteen days in any 45-day period recorded at ingest still governs. Water access; no potable water claimed.

US DOE Alternative Fuels Data Center station locator, snapshot 2026-09-16. Straight-line miles to the nearest public, open, unrestricted station; restricted and planned units are shown but never counted.

On the agency's books. The land manager inventoried this site, so its existence is not in question — current conditions are. Nobody from here has camped it recently.