Estcourt Station (elevation: , pop. 4) is a village within the Big Twenty Township in the

state of Maine Maine ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the United States, and the northeasternmost state in the Contiguous United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Provinces and ...

. It is the northernmost point in the United States east of the

Great Lakes The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes spanning the Canada–United States border. The five lakes are Lake Superior, Superior, Lake Michigan, Michigan, Lake Huron, H ...

. The ZIP Code for Estcourt Station is 04741. Although part of Maine, the village uses Quebec, Canada area code 418.

Overview

Estcourt Station is located on the

Canada–United States border The international border between Canada and the United States is the longest in the world by total length. The boundary (including boundaries in the Great Lakes, Atlantic, and Pacific coasts) is long. The land border has two sections: Canada' ...

between Maine and

Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

, at the southern end of

Lake Pohenegamook Lake Pohenegamook (, ) is a Canadian lake located in Temiscouata Regional County Municipality (MRC), in the administrative region of Bas-Saint-Laurent in southeastern Quebec, immediately north of the International Boundary with Maine at Aroos ...

in the North Maine Woods region. It derives its name from the adjacent village of Estcourt, Quebec, which is part of the larger municipality of Pohénégamook. The Estcourt Station–Pohénégamook Border Crossing is staffed during the work week, usually for processing

logging truck A logging truck or timber lorry is a large truck used to carry logs. Some have integrated flatbeds, some are discrete tractor units, and some are configured to spread a load between the tractor unit and a dollied trailer pulled behind it. Oft ...

s that access Maine's North Woods to haul

timber Lumber is wood that has been processed into uniform and useful sizes (dimensional lumber), including beams and planks or boards. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, window frames). ...

to Quebec saw mills. The populated part of Estcourt Station is essentially a sliver of the village of Estcourt that was cut off when the international boundary was properly surveyed through the area (see Webster–Ashburton Treaty). It consists of a row of several houses along Rue de la Frontière, a street on the Quebec side of the border, some of which were built before the survey and which the border now passes through. Although the US census reports that four people live in the village, according to a

Canada Border Services Agency The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA; , ''ASFC'') is a federal law enforcement agency that is responsible for border guard, border control (i.e. protection and surveillance), immigration enforcement, and Customs, customs services in Canada. ...

agent, no one lives in Estcourt Station full-time . A few U.S. residents live in the village during the summer. They must follow the hours of the border control stations; thus, after 5 p.m. on Friday, they cannot leave until 8 a.m. Monday. Anyone wishing to travel between Pohénégamook and Estcourt Station legally after hours would have to travel on hundreds of miles of private logging roads through the North Maine Woods that are difficult to navigate during spring and summer rains, and almost inaccessible because of snow during the winter; there are no towns or paved roads in the North Maine Woods. Likewise, Estcourt Station is connected to

Hydro-Québec Hydro-Québec () is a Canadian Crown corporations of Canada#Quebec, Crown corporation public utility headquartered in Montreal, Quebec. It manages the electricity generation, generation, electric power transmission, transmission and electricity ...

for

electricity Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter possessing an electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by Maxwel ...

. The community receives

drinking water Drinking water or potable water is water that is safe for ingestion, either when drunk directly in liquid form or consumed indirectly through food preparation. It is often (but not always) supplied through taps, in which case it is also calle ...

and other municipal services from Pohénégamook.

Canadian National Railway The Canadian National Railway Company () is a Canadian Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States. CN is Canada's largest railway, in terms of both revenue a ...

's transcontinental main line between Halifax and

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

passes immediately north of Rue de la Frontière.

Michel Jalbert incident

In October 2002, a Pohénégamook resident named Michel Jalbert was arrested by two U.S. Border Patrol officers from the Canadian border after he had driven across to Estcourt Station to buy fuel for his truck. After he spent more than a month in a US federal prison, he was released and allowed to return to Canada on a $5,000 bond. U.S. agents said Jalbert had driven past a closed U.S. Customs Service post and not declared he was entering the United States. In March 2003, Jalbert pled guilty in a US federal court to a charge that he crossed the US–Canadian border illegally; his sentence was a plea deal that was 35 days' time already served in jail, two years of supervised release and no fines. The US Secretary of State at the time,

Colin Powell Colin Luther Powell ( ; – ) was an Americans, American diplomat, and army officer who was the 65th United States secretary of state from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African-American to hold the office. He was the 15th National Security ...

, called the incident "unfortunate" during a visit to Canada.

Climate

According to the

Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification divides Earth climates into five main climate groups, with each group being divided based on patterns of seasonal precipitation and temperature. The five main groups are ''A'' (tropical), ''B'' (arid), ''C'' (te ...

system, Estcourt Station has a Warm-summer,

humid continental climate A humid continental climate is a climatic region defined by Russo-German climatologist Wladimir Köppen in 1900, typified by four distinct seasons and large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot (and often humid) summers, and cold ...

(''Dfb''). ''Dfb'' climates are characterized by a least one month having an average mean temperature ≤ , at least four months with an average mean temperature ≥ , all months with an average mean temperature < and no significant precipitation difference between seasons. Although most summer days are comfortably humid in Estcourt Station, episodes of warmth and high humidity can occur with

heat index The heat index (HI) is an index that combines air temperature and relative humidity, in shade (shadow), shaded areas, to posit a human-perceived equivalent temperature, as how hot it would feel if the humidity were some other value in the Shade (s ...

values > . Since 1981, the highest air temperature was on July 5, 2008, and the highest daily average mean

dew point The dew point is the temperature the air needs to be cooled to (at constant pressure) in order to produce a relative humidity of 100%. This temperature depends on the pressure and water content of the air. When the air at a temperature above the ...

was on July 2, 2002. The average wettest month is July which corresponds with the annual peak in

thunderstorm A thunderstorm, also known as an electrical storm or a lightning storm, is a storm characterized by the presence of lightning and its acoustics, acoustic effect on the Earth's atmosphere, known as thunder. Relatively weak thunderstorm ...

activity. Since 1981, the wettest calendar day was on October 15, 2005. During the winter months, the average annual extreme minimum air temperature is . Since 1981, the coldest air temperature was on January 16, 2009. Episodes of extreme cold and wind can occur with

wind chill Wind chill (popularly wind chill factor) is the sensation of cold produced by the wind for a given ambient air temperature on exposed skin as the air motion accelerates the rate of heat transfer from the body to the surrounding atmosphere. Its va ...

values < . The average annual snowfall (Sep-May) is > .

Ecology

According to the A. W. Kuchler U.S. potential natural vegetation types, Estcourt Station would have a dominant vegetation type of Northern

Hardwood Hardwood is wood from Flowering plant, angiosperm trees. These are usually found in broad-leaved temperate and tropical forests. In temperate and boreal ecosystem, boreal latitudes they are mostly deciduous, but in tropics and subtropics mostl ...

Spruce A spruce is a tree of the genus ''Picea'' ( ), a genus of about 40 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal ecosystem, boreal (taiga) regions of the Northern hemisphere. ''Picea'' ...

(''108'') with a dominant vegetation form of Northern

s (''23''). The plant hardiness zone is 3b with an average annual extreme minimum air temperature of . The spring bloom typically peaks around May 17 and fall color usually peaks around September 25.

Notes

External links