Figure 2. Portion of Danforth 15' USGS topographic map. The view of Katahdin in the Jackson plate is noted as near Butterfield's; exactly where is not known. It seems likely that the party stopped on the higher ground that the present-day U.S. Route 1 passes over just to the north of Butterfield Landing in Weston. In 1835, William Butterfield, Esquire and Justice of the Peace, was one of the original incorporators of the town (Kinney, 1984). An esker can be seen on the western edge of the map. It seems unlikely that this was the "horseback" that Jackson notes made travel easier. Early maps of Maine by Moses Greenleaf show the road that now is U.S. Route 1 was then called the Calais - Houlton Road, and the trace of it beyond Two-Mile Curve can be seen on the topographic map. The town of Danforth wasn't incorporated until 1860. The main road may have been re-routed prior to that, but clearly the old road was still passable in 1943, the date of the topographic map. Something that hasn't changed, even after 174 years, is that most people in Maine still refer to the esker ridges as "horsebacks".

Enlarged view (pdf format, 9.5Mb) of Figure 2.

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Last updated on April 13, 2010

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