RANGELEY – Bethel Belle, Litchfield Pippin, Winn’s Russet, the Bailey Golden, the Aunt Judith – these were some of the early apples in Maine, part of the 300 or so apple varieties that prospered during the early years of the United States.

Rangeley Lakes Region Logging Museum will hold its 15th annual Apple Festival from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 4, at the Church of the Good Shepherd, Main Street.

Carol Haley, Becky and Richard Hill, Lynnie Raymond and Rodney Richard will make beef stew for a luncheon that will begin at 11 a.m. Becky Hill, Mary Ellen Simon, Steve Richard and other volunteers will also serve up hot dogs, sandwiches and apple desserts.

Inside the church, homemade foods made with apples and more will be for sale, including pies, breads, muffins, cookies and jellies. Crafts from throughout the region as well as a white elephant table will fill the church undercroft.

Margaret Yezil of Oquossoc will offer her creations, such as place mats, toy moose and Christmas items. From Salem, Daria Babbitt, Colleen Coffren and April Grant will bring their knit goods and textile arts. Susan and William Lewis of Rangeley and Sue Young of New Portland will have creations in wood. Other crafters have promised apple cookie cutters, pot holders and wood crafts.

John Richard will oversee the sale of the logging museum’s publications, “Logging in the Maine Woods: The Paintings of Alden Grant and Working the Woods,” as well as T-shirts, sweatshirts and the fall raffle tickets. The raffle features a white Yamaha Phazer GT snowmobile, which can be viewed on the front lawn of museum President Rodney Richard Sr., Main Street.

Outside the church, Richard Sr. and Rodney Richard Jr. of Pownal will rev up their chain saws and bring a host of Maine animals out of blocks of white pine. Logging Museum board members Richard Hill and Wayne Lessard will demonstrate apple pressing and cider making on the apple press. Terry Trask of Jay will sell apples, so festival visitors can press apples into cider. People may also bring their own apples to be pressed.

Apples loom large in the history of western Maine. The apple press, owned by Bill and Margaret Ellis, points to Rangeley’s earlier years. From the family’s apples, Bill’s mother, Katharine, made dried apples, apple rings, apple leather, apple sauce, baked apples and cider.

And the family would walk up to their orchard where Bill’s great-grandfather Jerry, lived, for the Jerry Ellis Apple Picking Day. “Just whoever was around in the immediate family would go up there and pick apples,” Bill said, “and fill our backpacks. There must be 20 different kinds of apples up there.”

Dick Witham of Phillips remembers the apples of his boyhood: “We had an old, square, wooden cart on wheels and a wooden bucket,” Witham said of himself and a childhood friend. “And there was a nice, beautiful apple tree out back of the church. Nice apples. So we went and filled that cart up with apples, and we went around town selling apples. Twenty-five cents a bucket.”

Admission to the festival is free. For more information, call the Richards at 864-5595. From October to June, the Rangeley Lakes Region Logging Museum is open by appointment only; call 864-5595. Visit the Web site at http://mason.gmu.edu/~myocom and click on “Maine Folklore Projects.”