A Maine Gazetteer: Sebago Lake

Next door to Long Lake, Sebago Lake is the poster boy for southern Maine’s paradox of use.  It is Maine’s second largest lake, and its deepest.  Its water is still so pure that it supplies Portland without the need for filtration. Its shores are thick with cottages and mansions and a total of 2,500 septic systems. Its 300-foot depths shelter the original land-locked salmon (which now need stocking) and lake trout (which do not).  Jet skis are neither banned nor regulated, as they are on many Maine lakes. The towns on its shores are bedroom communities for Portland just 15 miles away, none stranger than the seasonal town of Frye Island that in summer might as well be a Portland suburb, with golf course and “leisure activities” and the obligatory lakeside restaurant serving burgers, whose ferry completely shuts down in winter, as does the whole island, whose official population is zero.

Excerpted from Saving Maine: A Personal Gazetteer

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