Estcourt Station (elevation: 671 ft, pop. 4) is a village in Big Twenty Township, Aroostook County, Maine, United States. It is the northernmost point in Maine and New England.
Estcourt Station is located on the International Boundary between Maine and Quebec, at the southern end of Lake Pohenegamook. It derives its name from the adjacent village of Estcourt, Quebec, which is part of the larger municipality of Pohénégamook.
Estcourt Station consists of several houses, some of which were built before the International Boundary was properly surveyed through the area (see Webster–Ashburton Treaty) and which the border now divides. There is also a general store and a small gas station. Estcourt Station does not have public road access to the rest of Maine (without entering Canada), although an extensive network of privately-owned logging roads (maintained by forestry companies) extends south of the community across northern Maine.
Estcourt Station accesses Rue Frontière, a street on the Quebec side of the border. Estcourt Station uses Quebec's area codes 418 and 581 for telephone service, and is connected to Hydro-Québec for electricity. The community receives drinking water and other municipal services from Pohénégamook.
Canadian National Railway's transcontinental main line between Halifax and Montreal passes immediately north of Rue Frontière.
There are border control stations on both sides of the international boundary, although they are staffed only several hours daily, usually for processing logging trucks which access Maine's North Woods to haul timber to Quebec saw mills.
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In October 2002, there was an "unfortunate" border incident (described by Secretary of State Colin Powell[1]) that implicated Michel Jalbert, a Pohénégamook resident, who was imprisoned for 35 days in the U.S. after purchasing gas in Estcourt Station outside of the U.S. Customs Service's normal operating hours. U.S. Border Patrol agents said that Mr. Jalbert was a convicted felon (convicted in Canada for breaking and entering in 1990 when he was 19 years old) and was in illegal possession of a firearm; he reportedly had a shotgun in the back of his truck – a common occurrence in the area during partridge hunting season.[2]