STRATTON — The Dead River Area Historical Society will open for the season on Saturday, July 3, and will be open every weekend during July and August from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The first weekend will feature a sporting camp exhibit. There were many sporting camps in the area and some of them still exist such as Tim Pond, Tea Pond and Kibby Camps.

In 2009, the society was given a diary written by George Bliss, a man who visited Tim Pond Camps from 1916 to 1919 and wrote in detail about his experiences right down to the food he was served. The diary includes photographs he took of Tim Pond Camps, some of the people who were there when he was, as well as many photographs of Stratton and Eustis.

He gives accounts of towns he went through to get there, traveling by train from Massachusetts to Bigelow Station and all the train stations along the way. He traveled by wagon from Stratton to Tim Pond and the road was so bumpy sometimes he just got out a walked.

Also on display in the museum are artifacts, manuscripts and photographs that have been donated or loaned by interested townspeople and descendants of original families of the Dead River Region.

Collections from 1850 on include old carpentry and logging tools, china, glass, a church organ, furniture from native families, a complete schoolroom, a memorial room to the “lost” towns of Flagstaff and Dead River, the lineage of several native families and a host of memorabilia from native homesteads.

For more information, call Mary Henderson 246-2271.