Lay of the Land
Covering the 400-mile distance from Maine’s border with New
Brunswick to the eastern shore of Lake Ontariothe Northern Forest’s
30 million acres encompass northern Maine, New Hampshire and
Vermont, and New York’s North Country, including the Adirondacks
and the Tug Hill plateau. The forest reaches north and east into
Quebec and the Maritime Provinces of Canada, sweeping across
a rugged landscape with more than 100 peaks higher than 4,000
feet—including all of the tallest mountains in the northeastern
United States.
The Northern Forest is a landscape of spruce, fir, pine and
hardwoods, including the sugar maple, beech, birch, and both
white and black ash. Innumerable lakes and wetlands, rolling
hills and rugged mountains shape the landscape. All of the major
rivers in the Northeast—the Hudson, Mohawk, Connecticut, Merrimack,
Androscoggin, Kennebec, Penobscot and the St. John—spring from
headwaters in the Northern Forest. The forest has been a source
of subsistence, wealth, recreation and renewal for centuries.
See a larger map of the Northern Forest.
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