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Owner Plans To Rebuild Historic Chesuncook Lake House Destroyed In Fire

Photos courtesy of the Chesuncook Lake House
The 150-year-old Chesuncook Lake House, destroyed in a weekend fire.

A fire that leveled a 150-year-old inn on a remote lake over the weekend has torn out a long and storied chapter of Maine history.

The Chesuncook Lake House first served as a base camp for loggers, and then as a wilderness retreat for outdoor enthusiasts wanting to experience the North Woods as they were at the turn of the century.

It’s not easy to reach the Chesuncook Lake House, 50 miles north of Greenville and 65 miles west of Millinocket. And Vern Labbe, deputy director for public lands, says that’s the way he liked it. Labbe worked at the Lake House in the early ’80s.

“To me, the thing that made it special back then is there was only, basically, two ways to get there: by boat or over the ice, snowmobile or snowshoe. But it was a long walk from anywhere, and back then you didn’t have a lot of snowmobiles. So it was an experience to go to the village. You made an effort to get there,” he says.

Chesuncook Village is currently a cluster of privately owned camps that at one time included a store, a church and a school, all part of a logging community. Labbe says people would go up to work for the winter and come down with the river drives in the spring. When those ended in the late ’70s, the population dropped, but Chesuncook Village and the Lake House remained a special place to visit.

“They were definitely off the grid 100 years ago, and they still are to some degree. Those individual camps, a lot of them still don’t have power, still propane and no running water, a lot of them so, still the old life,” he says.

Suzanne AuClair, executive director of the Moosehead Historical Society in Greenville, says the Chesuncook Lake House holds special significance for Moosehead-area residents and businesses because of its legacy as an outpost at the edge of civilization, the last frontier in the east. It was made popular as a destination, AuClair says, by Bert and Maggie McBurnie, who bought it in 1957 and ran it for more than 40 years.

Bert had grown up in Chesuncook Village and was an experienced Maine Guide.

“They didn’t try to cater to a certain kind of person. You know, the McBurnies, Bert, was who he was and he was very well respected as an outdoorsman, and they just welcomed people into that world. It was a world apart and they were very proud of that,” AuClair says.

Aside from the occasional float plane across the lake or the roar of snowmobiles in winter, this world apart is one in which being unplugged is the only option.

Labbe recalls sitting on the front porch and staring across the 18-mile lake with the setting sun on Mount Katahdin. There’s still plenty of wildlife and good fishing, he says, it’s still off the grid and the new owners, the Surprenants, have expanded the business by adding three cabins.

Credit Photos Courtesy of the Chesuncook Lake House
Cabins at the Chesuncook Lake House

All three were spared from the fire which broke out early Saturday morning.

“We were in the back section of the house and we were awakened by one of our sons banging on the door that there was a fire,” says David Surprenant, speaking by satellite phone.

Surprenant says his family and guests were all able to get out safely. He says they grabbed their winter coats and boots and just stood in the snow in the freezing cold and watched the inn burn to the ground. There was nothing they could do.

Since then, Surprenant says, support from friends and neighbors has been overwhelming. And he says he and his wife have decided that they will rebuild.

“We’ve been doing it for 20 years. I think we’re gonna continue to do it. It was a fire. It’s not the end of the world. Nobody got hurt,” he says.

Friends and supporters have planned a snowmobile outing that they’re calling “The Last Ride” to the Chesuncook House this weekend. It will double as a fundraiser for the Surprenant family. And David Surprenant says next year, there will be a new ride to the next lake house that will take its place.

Correction: The Chesuncook Lake House is on Chesuncook Lake, not Moosehead Lake.

This story was originally published March 20, 2018 at 4:12 p.m. ET.