19 Best Sights in Western Lakes and Mountains, Maine

Height of Land is the highlight of—and the highest point along—Rangeley Lakes National Scenic Byway, with unforgettable views of mountains and lakes. One of Maine's and even New England's best overlooks, it hugs Route 17 atop Spruce Mountain several miles south of Rangeley's Oquossoc village. It's a twisty drive up on forest-lined roads whether you're coming that way or from the south, but however you get here you'll be amply rewarded. Mooselookmeguntic and Upper Richardson lakes sprawl amid the forestland below. On a clear day, you can look west to the White Mountains on the Maine–New Hampshire border. There's off-road parking, interpretive panels, and stone seating. Hit the Appalachian Trail for a day hike—it crosses Height of Land. Rangeley Lake unfolds at a nearby overlook on the opposite side of the road, north of here toward Oquossoc.

Space rocks, Maine mineralogy, and western Maine's mineral and gem mining legacy converge at this impressive interactive 15,000-square-foot museum—unexpected for a town Bethel’s size. Surrounding the handsome structure that joined two Main Street buildings is a garden with large rocks, some resembling modern sculpture and all placarded with interesting facts about their origins, etc. Opened in 2019, the two-story museum has 19 exhibits in four galleries. Kids love the simulated mining blast, part of an exhibit on gem discoveries and mica and feldspar mining in the Bethel area. The museum's collection includes 37,940 mineral specimens, many Maine-mined. A replica of a Maine mineral store, once a tourist hot spot, showcases prized specimens. In the Hall of Gems (and the gift shop!), jewelry featuring Maine's famed pink and watermelon tourmaline, and other gems bedazzles. The Space Rocks gallery darkens every half hour for a 3D film that beams about as if a meteorite shower has blown up the walls, revealing Bethel. Strikingly displayed is a famed meteorite collection: the museum has the world's "largest known" pieces of the moon and Mars and more lunar meteorites than other museums combined. Visitors can hold a space rock, and scientists relate interesting facts via life-size videos as though they were in the room. Off the gift shop, the free Discovery Gallery has changing exhibits and drawers with minerals, rocks, and fossils. Check the website for events like the summertime outdoor sluice.

Bowling is just one reason families, couples, locals, and visitors head here for a night out, or indoor fun on a rainy—or sunny!—day. There are arcade games, billiards, foosball, cornhole, shuffleboard, darts, air hockey, and dancing and live music (check the website), plus 10 bowling lanes. Spirits Bar Grill & Cafe serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and folks stop in for ice cream, house-made donuts and bagels, or an espresso, settling in upfront in a curvy lounge seat or at the soda fountain--like counter. Images of fish, moose, loons, and Rangeley Lake are smattered on the dance floor and antler chandeliers cast a mellow glow, but the woodsy decor throughout this large establishment is modern and fun, not overdone. Between the dance floor and bowling lanes, the bar is faced with river stone veneer as are pillars inside and out. Here there's table seating, couches, and around the firepit, roomy armchairs. Order at the counter: food is delivered to your table, seat, lane, or game spot. The delish pub fare (try the chipotle sweet potato fries) is served until close. 

A premier Maine Public Land, this 36,000-acre preserve takes in the 7-peak Bigelow Range (aka Bigelow Mountain and Mount Bigelow), a National Natural Landmark. At 4,150 feet, West Peak is one of 10 Maine summits exceeding 4,000 feet. The Appalachian Trail wends through "the Bigelows," inviting with side trails, too. There are several trailheads for the vast preserve—conveniently located east of Stratton and Eustis villages. Multiuse roads welcome mountain bikers; hunting is allowed. In winter, visitors cross-country ski, snowshoe, and snowmobile. Most of the shoreline of 20,000-acre Flagstaff Lake is within the preserve, which has several boat launches and picnic and swimming areas. Most Maine lakes are natural, but damming created this man-made one in the 1940s.  Maine's Public Lands (aka Public Reserved Lands) offer rugged outdoor recreation and are also managed for wildlife protection and timbering; they aren't staffed like state parks, and facilities are primitive.

Grafton Notch Scenic Byway (Route 26) runs through its namesakes—the park and the notch—at the northeastern reach of the Mahoosuc Range (White Mountains). A favorite fall foliage destination stretching along the Bear River valley 14 miles north of Bethel, it's a short walk from roadside parking areas to the waterway's distinctive Screw Auger Falls, which drops through a gorge, creating pools (.4 mile trail network); V-shaped Mother Walker Falls (.2 mile round-trip); and Moose Cave, a feature of another gorge (.4 mile loop trail; watch for slippery rocks). Also aside the road: the nicely shaded Spruce Meadow picnic area and the trailhead for the Appalachian Trail, the departure point for day hikes that follow or incorporate it. Table Rock Loop Trail (2.4 miles round-trip; moderate) rewards hikers with views of mountains and the notch from a ledge. More challenging is the 7.6-mile round-trip trek (advanced) via the AT to the viewing platform atop 4,180-foot Old Speck Mountain, one of Maine's highest peaks. Some of the AT's toughest sections run through Grafton Notch and 31,764-acre Mahoosuc Public Land, whose two tracts sandwich the park, offering stunning, if strenuous, backcountry hiking (also backcountry campsites). In winter, the park's snowmobile trail along Bear River is popular; ungroomed trails draw snowshoers and cross-country skiers.

Spruce railings and siding on this acclaimed museum's facade replicate a local taxidermy shop from 1900 or so. Inside, there's an authentic log sporting camp from this period, when grand hotels and full-service sporting lodges drew well-to-do rusticators to Rangeley for long stays. Diverse and in-depth exhibits at this Historic Rangeley museum explore such subjects as U.S. presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Herbert Hoover fishing in Rangeley; the famed Rangeley boat, a rowing craft designed for local waters (two are displayed); art of the region; and gleaming fish mounts of world-record-size brook trout. The Native American gallery has a birch-bark canoe, artifacts, and a Penobscot language place name map. A big draw is an exhibit on local flytier Carrie Stevens, whose famed streamer flies increased the region's fly-fishing fame in the 1920s. Free exhibits and informational placards on the front lawn invite a stop even if the museum is closed: a 12,000-year-old Paleo-American meat cache (moved here from a Rangeley archaeological site), a traditionally styled Wabanaki wigwam, and another Rangeley boat. See the website for events, including summer walking tours of Oquossoc and Rangeley, where a sister museum on local history occupies a small 1905 former bank.

Local youth Rufus Porter became a leading folk artist, painting murals of rural landscapes and harbors inside New England homes in the first half of the 1800s. Several museum rooms bear examples of this then-on-trend decor, but as visitors learn, Porter was also an “ahead of his time” inventor and writer and founded Scientific American magazine. An eye-catching 1830s former residence on Main Street has exhibits about Porter, including early issues of the magazine, his miniature portraits, and models of inventions such as a corn shucker and a revolving rifle whose design and production rights he sold to gunmaker Samuel Colt. In the excellent gift shop, you'll find books by and about this ingenious man. The late-1700s, barn red, Cape Cod–style Nathan Church House, moved here in 2016, has two rooms with unsigned Porter murals. Among his apprentices was his nephew Jonathan D. Poor, whose art adorns two rooms and a hall in a barn like 2024 building: the muraled walls were moved here from a home elsewhere in Maine. Clustered together, the buildings have permanent and changing exhibits, many interactive and kid-friendly.

Built in 1872 and pedestrian-only since 1958, the most painted and photographed of Maine's nine covered bridges can be found north of Bethel in neighboring Newry. From U.S. 2, turn onto Sunday River Road (watch for signs; stay to the right at the "Y" intersections). The 87-foot-long Paddleford truss bridge is aside the modern one that handles road traffic these days. A popular swimming spot, folks put in by the old wood bridge or follow the path from its south end to a bend in the river.

Visitors to the 1,873-acre Bald Mountain Public Land can hike, hunt, fish, boat, snowmobile, and/or snowshoe. The popular 1-mile trail up Bald Mountain gets tougher near the summit, but hikers are richly rewarded with panoramic views that sweep across Mooselookmeguntic, Rangeley, and Cupsuptic lakes and extend to Height of Land, Saddleback, and Elephant mountains, and New Hampshire's Mt. Washington. For a longer hike, start at the trailhead near Haines Landing boat launch at the edge of Oquossoc village. You'll pass remnants of an old ski area before linking with the main trail below the summit on the 2.3-mile trail network.  Maine's undeveloped Public Lands (aka Public Reserved Lands) offer rugged outdoor recreation; they aren't staffed like state parks, and any facilities are primitive.

At the edge of the village, these wooded trails are part of the Inland Woods + Trails network. Used for mountain biking, walking, and running and come winter, fat-tire bicycling, snowshoeing, and cross-country skiing, the trails can be accessed outside the Bethel Resort & Suites golf course pro shop. In the winter, the shop rents cross-country skis and fat-tire bikes.

Water cascades through this rest area's namesake canyon on the outskirts of the Rangeley area. On hot days, folks cool off in the swimming holes and soak up the sun on the smooth, striated rocks. There are picnic tables, bathrooms, paths, and a bridge. The geological formation is along the Swift River, a popular gold panning destination. Across the road from the rest area, seasonal Coos Canyon Rock and Gift ( www.cooscanyonrockandgift.com) sells and rents gold panning equipment and provides free prospecting demonstrations. The shop also sells ice cream, snacks, gifts, and souvenirs. Visitors often combine a stop at Coos Canyon with one at Height of Land overlook 11½ miles north of here and also right aside Route 17.  

Across from Bethel Hill Common, the society's campus comprises three buildings: the 1821 O'Neil and Betsey Straw Robinson House and the 1813 Dr. Moses and Agnes Straw Mason House, both on the National Register of Historic Places, and Twitchell Education Center, a replica of the small library Dr. Moses constructed aside his home in 1837. The O'Neil Robinson House has well-done exhibits about the region's history and a Maine Ski & Snowboard Museum display. One parlor room serves as a gift shop with a nice book selection. The Mason House has nine period rooms and many decorative items that are original to the home, whose front hall and stairway are adorned with Rufus Porter School folk art murals painted in the 1830s. Changing exhibits are in the barn gallery. Check the museum website for events such as children's programs in the library replica, also used for changing exhibits. In town when the museum is closed? Touch base as it does open by appointment.

Head out back to check out the Sunday River snow roller, pulled by a team of horses back in the day, and a giant Mt. Zircon Moon Tide Spring "Ginger Champagne" soda bottle lunch stand, a 1920s promotion for a defunct western Maine spring and soda water company. 

On the south shore of Rangeley Lake, this 869-acre park has superb lakeside scenery, with Saddleback Mountain anchoring the distant view across the water from the swimming beach. Here, where the shore coves in a bit, are picnic tables and restrooms. Just under a mile and running through this day use area, the longer of the park's two trails follows the lake from the boat launch (trailer accessible) to the campground and playground. A ¾-mile inland trail passes through woods and can be linked with the entrance road for a longer hike. In the off-season, visitors can park outside the park gate and walk in.

Established in the late 18th century, this is the last active Shaker community in the world. The farmstead’s many structures include the 1794 Meetinghouse and 1839 Ministry’s Shop, where the elders and eldresses lived until the early 1900s. Guided tours are limited to these two buildings, but this admission includes "Creating Chosen Land," an exhibit on the village's history and evolution (Chosen Land is its "spiritual name") in the 1816 Granary. Admission to the exhibit is also sold separately, and the one on Shaker childhood in the 1850 Boys’ Shop, now the visitor center, is free. Pick up a free self-guided walking tour with information about all of Sabbathday Lake's buildings. Visitors are also welcome to walk the gardens. The visitor center shop sells books, Shaker-related items, and handcrafts by area artisans. More await at the longtime roadside Shaker Store in the Trustees' Office, an 1816 building. Shaker-made products like jams, candles, and soap are also sold; in the antique section you may happen upon “fancy goods” like the poplar boxes and dolls made here years ago for sale to tourists. Check the website for events, including one-day workshops. The village's Wabanaki Arts Market in late August and Harvest Festival on Indigenous Peoples Day/Columbus Day are free and open to the public.

This 1,400-acre expanse on the north shore of Sebago Lake is a great spot for swimming, boating, and fishing for both salmon and togue (lake trout). Its 250-site campground is the largest at any Maine state park. Bicycling along the park's roads is a popular pastime in warm weather, as is hiking on the 13 miles of trails. Come winter, the park offers 6 miles of groomed cross-country trails (stay to the ungroomed side for snowshoeing). On the park's edge, Songo Lock State Historic Site, an operational lock along the twisting, narrow Songo River and a remnant of a 19th-century canal system, is a pleasant—and free—picnic area. You can also fish off the ADA-accessible pier and launch a kayak or canoe.

A beloved destination for generations of Mainers and visitors, Smalls Falls regularly lands on Maine’s “best waterfalls” lists. The four falls are along a scenic Sandy River gorge at a roadside rest area on a mountainous stretch of Route 4. There's a viewing bridge, and a path (fenced in part) heads up for a closeup look at the falls, which are carved through rock walls of varied color. The tallest drop is 25 feet, and together they total 54 feet, including a 3-foot cascade. Folks wade and swim in the pools below the falls, but don’t risk a dangerous plunge. There are picnic tables, grills, and bathrooms.

Original Stanley Steamer cars built by identical twin brothers Francis and Freelan Stanley—Kingfield's most famous natives—are the main draw at this museum inside a 1903 Georgian-style former school. Also well worth the stop here are exhibits about the glass-negative photography business the identical twins sold to Eastman Kodak, and the well-composed photographs, taken by their sister, Chansonetta Stanley Emmons, of everyday country life at the turn of the 20th century.

This forest straddles New Hampshire and Maine, with the highest peaks on the New Hampshire side. The Maine section, though smaller, has magnificent rugged terrain. Hikers can enjoy everything from hour-long nature loops to a day hike up Speckled Mountain. The mountain is part of the 14,000-acre Caribou-Speckled Mountain Wilderness Area, one of several in the forest, but the only one entirely within Maine. The most popular Maine access to the national forest is via Route 113, which runs south from its terminus at U.S. 2 in Gilead, 10½ miles from Bethel. Most of Route 113 is the Pequawket Trail Maine Scenic Byway—the section through the forest is spectacular come fall and closed in winter for snowmobiling and cross-country skiing. Three of the forest's campgrounds are in Maine; backcountry camping is allowed.

The museum showcases the life and work of Austrian physician, scientist, and writer Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957), who believed that all living matter and the atmosphere contain a force called orgone energy. The hilltop Orgone Energy Observatory exhibits biographical materials, inventions, and equipment used in his experiments, whose results were disputed by the Food and Drug Administration and other government agencies. Stone faces the exterior of the boxy 1949 structure, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A mid-century gem inside and out, Reich's second-floor study, library, and laboratory look as they did in his day, with original sleek modern furniture. The observatory deck has magnificent countryside views. Trails lace the largely forested 175-acre property, known as Orgonon, which has a year-round waterside vacation rental cottage. Reich's tomb sits next to one of his inventions, a cloud accumulator.