Estcourt Station, Maine
Estcourt Station (elevation: 671 ft, pop. 4) is a village in Big Twenty Township, Aroostook County, Maine, United States. It is the northernmost point in Maine and New England.
Description
Estcourt Station is located on the International Boundary between Maine and Quebec, at the southern end of Lake Pohenegamook. It derives its name from the adjacent village of Estcourt, Quebec, which is part of the larger municipality of Pohénégamook.
The populated part of Estcourt Station is essentially a sliver of the village of Estcourt that was cut off when the International Boundary was properly surveyed through the area (see Webster–Ashburton Treaty). It consists of a row of several houses along Rue Frontière, a street on the Quebec side of the border, some of which were built before the survey and which the border now passes through. There is also a general store and a small gas station.
As a result, Estcourt Station does not have public road access to the rest of Maine (without entering Canada), although an extensive network of privately owned logging roads (maintained by forestry companies) extends south of the community across northern Maine. Likewise, Estcourt Station uses Quebec's area code 418 for telephone service, and is connected to Hydro-Québec for electricity. The community receives drinking water and other municipal services from Pohénégamook.
Canadian National Railway's transcontinental main line between Halifax and Montreal passes immediately north of Rue Frontière.
There are border control stations on both sides of the international boundary, although they are staffed only several hours daily, usually for processing logging trucks that access Maine's North Woods to haul timber to Quebec saw mills.
Michel Jalbert incident
In October 2002, there was an "unfortunate" border incident (as described by Secretary of State Colin Powell[1]) that implicated Michel Jalbert, a Pohénégamook resident, who was imprisoned for 35 days in the U.S. after purchasing gas in Estcourt Station outside of the U.S. Customs Service's normal operating hours. U.S. Border Patrol agents said that Jalbert was a convicted felon (convicted in Canada for breaking and entering in 1990 when he was 19 years old) and was in illegal possession of a firearm; he reportedly had a shotgun in the back of his truck – a common occurrence in the area during partridge hunting season.[2]
See also
Notes
External links
- The Immigration Case of Michel Jalbert Teaches Larger Lessons
- David Rennie, "Village Customs border on the ridiculous"
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