MASON TOWNSHIP — The owners of a plot of land in an unorganized territory are suing Oxford County over ownership of a road running through their property.

Cameron Wake and Celina Adams of Kittery filed the lawsuit in Oxford County Superior Court in Paris on Monday through their lawyer, David Soley. The suit asks the court “to declare that the County of Oxford has no legal interest in that portion of Tyler Road” which passes through their property.

Adams and Wake said at the Feb. 14 meeting of the Oxford County Commission that they would sue over the road, which the county claims is a public road. They asked the commission to enter mediation on the issue. Commissioners voted to table the issue until they could speak with a lawyer.

At Tuesday’s meeting, several residents of Mason Township and Rupert Grover of Norway attended to testify that they understood the road was a public way. In addition, the county has received more than a dozen unsolicited letters from Mason Township residents and landowners, many concerned that Adams and Wake might cut off access to the road if they are decided to be the road’s owners.

Adams and Wake say the road is a right of way and they don’t mind the U.S. Forest Service or other residents using it for access. However, they remain opposed to widening and resurfacing work U.S. Forest Service officials say is necessary to allow access to the large trucks.

The couple, who bought about 21.5 acres in Mason Township in 2005, resisted in 2009 when the U.S. Forest Service began work widening and resurfacing the road to allow access to logging trucks. The Forest Service had recently purchased land for a timber sale beyond Wake and Adams’ property on Tyler Road.

Adams and Wake paid for an investigation by Belding Survey LLC of Harrison, which found that their section of the road had last been maintained in 1959 or 1960 and by Maine law fit the requirements of statutory abandonment. In Maine, a road that hasn’t been maintained for 30 years is the private property of a landowner who owns both sides of the road.

County Administrator Scott Cole and the commissioners have maintained that when the U.S. Forest Service performed maintenance on the road in the early 1980s, they were working as agents of the county and that the work constitutes county maintenance.

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