3 Best Sights in Western Lakes and Mountains, Maine

Spruce railings and siding on the museum's facade replicate a local taxidermy shop from about 1900. Inside, there's an authentic log sporting camp from the same period, when grand hotels and full-service sporting lodges drew well-to-do rusticators to Rangeley for long stays. One of the big draws is the exhibit on local flytier Carrie Stevens, whose famed streamer flies increased the region's fly-fishing fame in the 1920s. The many diverse exhibits include displays on U.S. presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Herbert Hoover fishing in Rangeley; vintage watercraft; Native American birch-bark canoes and artifacts; art of the region; and gleaming fish mounts of world-record-size brook trout. With free exhibits out front, this is a popular stop even when closed—don't miss the 12,000-year-old Native American meat cache.

Across from the Village Common, the society's campus comprises two buildings: the 1821 O'Neil Robinson House and the 1813 Dr. Moses Mason House, both on the National Register of Historic Places. The O'Neil Robinson House has well-done exhibits about the region's history and a Maine Ski and Snowmobile Museum display. One parlor room serves as a gift shop with a nice book selection. The Moses Mason House has nine period rooms, and the front hall and stairway are decorated with Rufus Porter School folk art murals. The barn gallery has 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.

Original Stanley Steamer cars built by 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.