Androscoggin River Trail and Paper Mill Trail

This is a paved, wheelchair accessible trail along the Androscoggin and Sabattus Rivers. It’s flat and pretty, and popular with walkers, joggers, and bikers. You walk along the rivers the whole way — it is such an amazing local resource. There’s a ledge by the Androscoggin River that looks like a good place to possibly swim? (Called Moore Rock on Google maps.) I’ve marked it with a red icon on my map.

The two parts of the trail — on Androscoggin River and on Sabattus — while both lovely, paved, and worth checking out, have slightly different characters. The Androscoggin River is wide and calm; Sabattus is narrower, with more bends and nooks.

The paper mill section on the Sabattus, which has at least one sign explaining the history of the area, is particularly nice — leafy and shady, with side trails to the river. (These side trails are not wheelchair accessible.) Depending on which spur you head down, you’ll find water sliding down and around flat ledges, a little beach area, stone remnants of an 1865 bridge and sluice, or small rapids.

From the Lisbon Falls trailhead at the end of Davis Street to Miller Park, the distance is about 1.7 miles. From Miller Park to Lisbon Community School, it’s about 0.8 miles, and the most northern leg between the school and the bridge over Barker Brook is about 1 mile.

I also have included on my Google map a little loop around the riverfront park in Lisbon Falls, at the southern end of the trail, as you can also start your walk here and walk along Davis Street to pick up the path.

Directions: You can pick up this trail at several trailheads. One is at Miller Park, at the junction of Rt. 196 and Frost Hill Avenue in Lisbon. This tends to get full on nice weekend days. You can also park at the end of Davis Street/Blethen Street, at Lisbon Community School, or off Capital Ave, near Enterprise Electric. There’s what looks to be an informal dirt parking area off Upland Road, as well.