A Northern Maine sporting camp is for sale for $1.1M

By Kathleen O’Brien, Bangor Daily News Staff

A 6-acre sporting camp near Maine’s 100 Mile Wilderness with numerous cabins is for sale for $1.1 million.

Established in 1895, the property, called Buckhorn Camps, sits on more than 6 acres and has 11 buildings on the property. This includes one main cabin, eight cabins of various sizes that the owners rent, an old dining hall called “the hangar,” and a workshop that’s used primarily for storage, said co-owner Katy Wood. 

Built in the 1970s, the main three-story lodge has four bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, a spacious kitchen, living room and great room where guests gather for dinners, Wood said. 

The compound is on a peninsula of Jo-Mary Island in the North Maine Woods and is located in T4 Indian Purchase Township, an unorganized territory west of Millinocket. The property has 3,300 feet of frontage on both Lower and Middle Jo-Mary Lake. 

There’s no road to the property, meaning it’s accessible only by boat, seaplane or snowmobile in the winter, said Deb Henderson of Realty of Maine, the listing agent for the property. 

Some of the cabins are available year-round and cater to a variety of guests, including vacationers, group retreats and those on ice fishing or snowmobiling trips, Henderson said. 

Wood and her husband bought the property in 2020 and have since added solar panels, rebuilt the pier and upgraded the cabins’ fixtures, among other improvements. The owners lived on the property year-round for the first few years, but now stay seasonally. 

While the campground could remain under a rental structure, Henderson said it could also become a family compound where multiple members of the same family live on the site, as she has seen with similar properties. 

Henderson predicted an out-of-state buyer will take over the complex, as waterfront properties have grown to be so expensive that Mainers can’t afford them, she said. 

Regardless of why a person buys the property or what they intend to do with it, Wood said the new owner must be someone who is “passionate about the outdoors, wants a legacy property and wants to be a steward of the North Woods.” 

“It’ll be someone who’s seeking to truly reconnect with their family and friends and ground themselves in a remote location,” Wood said. “It’s a magical place and there are so many opportunities for the right buyer.”