Bowdoin pauses Kingfield campsite plan amid local ordinance review

Bowdoin College withdrew its Kingfield campsite application by email on May 26, putting the proposal on ice for at least six months and giving town officials time to review ordinances before the college returns. The pause came just before Kingfield selectmen were set to consider the plan, after residents and abutters had raised concerns about how a Brunswick-based college wants to expand its outdoor program beyond campus.

The plan centered on Bowdoin’s 20.7-acre property along the Carrabassett River, which the college bought in April 2025 and described as a base camp for the Bowdoin Outing Club about two hours from campus. Bowdoin said the club runs more than 170 off-campus trips, weekly programs and Orientation outings each year. The application called for seven gravel campsites, room for up to 28 tents, and capacity for as many as 112 students plus staff. It also included a 950-square-foot picnic area and a 600-square-foot sanitary building with a vault toilet and septic system, with the site to remain chemical-free and subject to a 10 p.m. noise curfew.

Bowdoin told the planning board the site would usually host closer to 40 students at a time, outside the late-August and early-September orientation period, when it expected about 84 students to use it. The college said it remained committed to the mountain center and the outing club, and framed the withdrawal as a way to keep dialogue going while Kingfield reviews whether its ordinances are adequate for transient overnight recreational uses.

The pushback in Kingfield was specific and organized. On May 4, residents and abutters objected to noise, traffic and shifting details in the proposal. A petition calling for a temporary moratorium on transient overnight recreational developments had gathered 85 signatures by then, and town officials discussed a 180-day moratorium. Kingfield Planning Board Chair Richard Hawkes said the board had received two additional letters about the campsite proposal and delayed its review so the town attorney could examine it. That delay mattered after voters cut $40,000 from the town administration budget at the last annual meeting, eliminating legal-services funding. This year’s proposed budget restores that money.

Traffic concerns sit at the center of the fight. The site is reached via Claybrook Road off Route 27, across a one-lane bridge and then along dead-end private roads, including Iron Bridge Road. Resident Jillian Monahan warned that seven vans could back up traffic and leave cars waiting on Route 27. Bowdoin pointed to a 2021 traffic study that found opposing vehicles crossed the bridge about once every 6.7 minutes, with widening recommended if that average reached every five minutes.

The project also carries emotional weight. The mountain center is named for Finnegan McCoul Woodruff ’21, a Maine-born Bowdoin student who died on November 16, 2021, while kayaking on the White Salmon River in Washington. More than 600 members of the Bowdoin family have contributed to the project. For Kingfield, the immediate question is whether the college’s pause reflects a tactical retreat or a belated recognition that it underestimated how deeply local rules, roads and rural character would shape the debate.