Big changes are coming to Maynard’s in Maine, the historic sportsmen’s camp near Moosehead Lake in Rockwood that sold last week for $1.5 million.
The iconic camp has been run by the Maynard family since it opened in 1919, but went up for sale in 2023 because no one in the family was in a position to take the business over. The nearly 100-acre camp has attracted sportsmen and women and families from across the country and beyond for decades, and has been an integral part of the Greenville area’s economy.
The reins were handed over to Matt Gallant of Augusta and his family last week on Wednesday. Gallant owns an excavation company and a camp near Moosehead Lake and said he operates several rental properties around Kennebec and Somerset counties.
“We love going up north to our camp, spending our free time up there, and we thought, well, it might be fun if we could be up there a lot more,” Matt Gallant said.
The Gallants plan to “keep tradition going” by maintaining the camp’s 13-cabin rental business under the Maynard’s name and continue offering boat rentals and other recreational opportunities in the winter. They will close the beloved restaurant that serves family-style meals for breakfast and dinner for now, but Gallant hopes to revive it sometime.
Other changes include opening for year-round lodging instead of just operating seasonally by winterizing, remodeling or replacing the cabins. Gallant will also upgrade docks and hopes to create seasonal camper sites with hook-ups.
That would be a boon to the region, which has seen the disappearance of almost all of its campgrounds in recent years, said the property’s listing agent, Scott Harding, a broker with eXp Realty.
Gallant plans to do all this renovation work himself. A lot of improvements were needed, which is why the original listing price of $3.9 million was slashed to $1.5 million upon the purchase. Harding added that one of the owners, William Maynard, who died last year while the camp was for sale, had some “higher expectations for the property” when it was first listed.
Several offers came in on the camp in the last year and a half, but Harding said the best bidders won out. The Gallants are “well-versed” in property management and were committed to maintaining the Maynard’s legacy, he said.
“We just hope to keep the tradition going and just really upgrade everything and get it back to where it once was,” Gallant said. “We look forward to people coming to stay with us and meet new people and take care of them.”
The Maynard family will stay on at the camp until July to ease with the transition, Gallant said. In a Facebook post, Gail Maynard, who ran the camp for the last five decades with William, her husband, called the change “bittersweet.”
“Gail Maynard has been there for 50-some years running that business,” Harding said. “It’s been in her husband’s family for decades. Gail worked hard her whole life. … We wish her the best in her retirement.”
