Kenduskeag Stream

"The Kenduskeag -- American Indian for "eel catching place" -- begins about 20 miles west of the Penobscot River and follows a relatively straight path with gradual curves as it cuts through craggy rocks exposed in the stream bed after the recession of the glaciers that once capped much of Maine before receding at the end of the ice age to create the unique beauty that is the Maine landscape.

Despite the enormous development since Thoreau first visited Bangor, the Kenduskeag has retained much of its natural character. In fact, the disappearance of the dozens of sawmills that once lined the stream in the mid- to late 1800s may have enhanced the stream's beauty to being even greater than when Thoreau walked its banks. The stream has survived the pollution and environmental damage wrought by Bangor's once-affluent and prodigious lumber industry, it has survived the dumping of raw sewage in the early to latter part of the 20th century, and it made it through the Urban Renewal movement of the 1960s that threatened to conceal the stream's path through downtown Bangor with pedestrian plazas and malls overhead."