Update on the Finnegan McCoul Woodruff Mountain Center in Kingfield
By Bowdoin NewsFollowing community feedback, Bowdoin pauses the Woodruff Mountain Center permitting process to allow the town time to review ordinances and continue dialogue.
Since then, the College has engaged in many discussions with Kingfield residents, local officials, and other interested individuals and groups in the Carrabassett Valley.
While the permitting process is paused for the moment, the College remains fully committed to supporting the Bowdoin Outing Club (BOC) and the opportunities the Finnegan McCoul Woodruff Mountain Center will provide for students.
Through more than 170 off-campus trips, weekly programs, and Orientation outings each year, the Bowdoin Outing Club introduces students to outdoor experiences that often become lifelong passions while fostering leadership, connection, and community.
For many years, the BOC has sought a centrally located base camp within its primary program area in the western Maine mountains.
This Kingfield property was purchased through the generosity of Dean of Student Affairs Emeritus Tim Foster and Stephanie Foster, both longtime Bowdoin staff members, who requested that the center be named in honor of Finnegan Woodruff ’21.
Reflecting on their support for the project, the Fosters said, “The BOC offers students the unusual opportunity to learn skills and practice leadership in Bowdoin’s largest classroom—the wild places of Maine and beyond.”
“The Bowdoin Outing Club has long embodied what people love most about this College: community, trust, humility, and a deep connection to place,” said Bowdoin College President Safa Zaki.
“For generations, the BOC has been students' way into Maine itself—its mountains, its coast, its quiet woods—and the friendships and confidence they find there stays with them long after they graduate.”
The project has also been supported by more than 600 members of the Bowdoin family who contributed as a way of showing their support for Woodruff and the BOC.
This strong showing from our alumni illustrates the powerful impact the outing club has had on students and the community for the past thirty years.
Finn Woodruff grew up in Maine and at Bowdoin. An environmental studies and music major at Bowdoin, he was an accomplished musician and visual artist and had an unbounded love for the outdoors. Beginning when he was a high school student, Woodruff taught BOC groups to paddle, ski, and—most of all—to celebrate every opportunity for adventure in the waters, woods, and mountains of Maine. In November 2021, while living in Washington and taking classes at Lewis and Clark University to finish his Bowdoin degree, Finn died in a kayaking accident on the White Salmon River.
As an outcome of Kingfield’s planning board review process, the College determined that the best course was to voluntarily withdraw the application and commit not to refile for at least six months.
This pause will allow the town time to review its ordinances while also creating space for more deliberate and substantive dialogue with community members and other stakeholders.
With the town’s support, Bowdoin hopes to move forward as a good neighbor and community partner with this project that is modest in scale, serious in purpose, and committed to fostering lasting appreciation for this remarkable region among generations of students to come.