Eric Stirling has been at West Branch Pond Camps  since he was a newborn, and now he’s running the place, working with his wife, Mildred, and his mother, Carol, to help keep the Maine sporting camp tradition alive.

That would be the historic Maine sporting camp tradition as well as family tradition—the camps have been owned and operated by members of Eric’s family for four generations.

“My mother flew in with me when I was a week old in 1975, and I’ve lived here pretty much full time except when I was going to college,” said Eric, a Bates graduate with a degree in economics with an environmental focus.

Eric has teamed up with the Appalachian Mountain Club to provide camp-to-camp cross-country ski trips and dog-sledding trips this winter. Guests can travel from AMC’s Little Lyford Lodge and Cabins to West Branch Pond Camps to AMC’s Medawisla Wilderness Lodge and Cabins, staying in cabins each night and enjoying the warmth of woodstoves and delicious home-cooked meals. (Reservations are available at (603) 466-2727.)

“I’m super thrilled with the potential with AMC for camp-to-camp skiing,” he said.

It will be the latest chapter in the long history of West Branch Pond Camps. Eric’s great-grandparents bought the camps from his great-grandfather’s half-brother, Lewis Chadwick, in 1920. Chadwick had purchased the camps from the original owner, Charles Randall, in 1910.

“Charles came up with his father around 1880 and found an abandoned logging camp here, and turned it into a moose camp,” said Eric, noting that the camp has been open to the public every season since that time. “We’re supposedly the oldest continuously operated sporting camp in the state,” he said.

While the partnership with AMC forms a connection between West Branch Pond Camps and Little Lyford Lodge and Cabins, there was a connection even earlier. Lyford’s was started by Charles Randall’s father, Philip, in, it is believed, 1873.

There’s another connection, too. Eric is the nephew of Rosemary James, co-manager with her husband, Chuck, of AMC’s Little Lyford Lodge and Cabins. And Rosemary, herself, grew up working at West Branch Pond Camps.

The camps consist of nine log cabins situated on 125-acre West Branch Pond in the shadow of White Cap Mountain. They’re about 30 miles outside of Greenville in TA, R12.

“The biggest thing that motivates me is the history, and being able to work outside and do something that involves both physical labor, such as carpentry work, and the things that go with running the business, such as bookkeeping,” Eric said.

And the history plays a big part in his connection to the camps. “It’s so unusual to be able to look through the old photographs, and there’s never been any interruption,” he said. “We know the history, and it’s great to be able to keep that alive.”

--Rob Burbank