BYRON – Residents of this tiny Northern Oxford County community may not have to raise money at their annual March town meeting to ensure the public purchase of Coos Canyon, after all.
That’s because $8,800 of the $10,000 that the town must raise toward the $80,000 cost has already flowed into the Town Office, said Melissa Plourde, the town’s treasurer and tax collector, on Thursday.
She feels sure the remaining $1,200 will come from additional donations. A letter to 250 nonresidents who own camps in the town was just sent out. It explains the situation and asks for donations to preserve the canyon area.
About $70,000 of the $80,000 price tag was provided by Land for Maine’s Future and the Outdoor Heritage Fund. A $5,000 grant was recently received to go toward the purchase as well, said Plourde.
About nine acres surrounding the popular picnic spot located off state Route 17 will be purchased by the town from Bayroot LLC, whose land is being managed by Wagner Land Management of New Hampshire. The property was previously owned by paper companies.
After learning that additional money had to be raised to ensure the purchase of the land, Patricia Duguay, a Byron resident and coordinator of the River Valley Healthy Communities Coalition, launched several fundraising events, including a raffle with prizes such as gold panned from the Swift River, and weekends at Coos Canyon Cabins and Coos Canyon Campground.
Plourde said some of the raffle money is included in the total gathered so far.
Although most of the donations have come from the Western Maine area, Plourde said the town has been receiving money from all over Maine.
“One woman sent the roster of students at the Coos Canyon School in the 1890s along with a donation,” she said. “We’ve also gotten a lot of comments about other public places being closed.”
Until much of paper mill land changed hands a few years ago, most people believed the Coos Canyon picnic area was owned by the state, largely because the Maine Department of Transportation maintains the area.
When Selectman Steve Duguay learned that a private developer was eyeing the land around the canyon a few years ago, he began trying to get state money for the purchase of the land by the town.
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