Eagle Lake Tramway

The Eagle Lake Tramway is a historic timber-transport mechanism in the remote North Maine Woods in northeastern USA. The tramway, built in 1902 and operated until 1907, transported timber across a neck of land between Eagle Lake and Chamberlain Lake, with one end eventually becoming the eastern terminus of the Eagle Lake and West Branch Railroad in 1927. The remnants of the tramway and rail station were listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Tramway Historic District in 1979. The tramway is part of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, a Maine state park.

The remote northern interior of Maine was in the 19th-century developed as a major logging region. Because the provincial government of New Brunswick began charging tariffs for timber floated down the Saint John River, American logging interest sought ways to divert timber into the Penobscot River watershed. This was accomplished by the placement of dams in a number of places on Chamberlain Lake and Eagle Lake, whose waters historically reached the Saint John via the Allagash River, which resulted in their waters' diversion toward Webster Lake , part of the Penobscot watershed. By the late 19th century the lock dam between Chamberlain and Eagle Lakes had become a hindrance to logging operations.

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