GETTING THERE FROM HERE – Scarborough looks to close Eastern Trail gap

SCARBOROUGH – When John Andrews, 74, was a young boy growing up in Gardiner, he checked out every book on chess he could find at the Maine State Library in Augusta. That experience came in useful, he says, when it came time to piece together the easements needed to create the 69-mile-long Eastern Trail – a walking path designed to run from Kittery to Casco Bay.

“The principles of chess apply to building this trail,” said Andrews, while walking Saturday in a section behind Scarborough’s Hillcrest Retirement Community, where he now lives. “Easements are such wonderful fun, and getting them, like chess, is a kind of war, full of tactics and strategy. You don’t start right out and go after the king, you’ve first got to get this little piece, and then that little piece.”

Now, as president emeritus of the Eastern Trail Alliance, which he founded 14 years ago, Andrews is beginning to maneuver those pieces into checkmate. A $1.3 million bridge over Interstate 95 opened in August, and a 4.37-mile section of trail will link Saco and Old Orchard Beach “by Thanksgiving,” he says. That leaves just two small sections – in Biddeford and Scarborough – to finish

The trail’s end (for now)

John Andrews, president emeritus of the Eastern Trail Alliance, sits where the Eastern Trail ends in Scarborough, at the old Eastern Railroad bridge over the Nonesuch River. Plans are under way to build a way to cross the river and close a 0.8-mile gap in the trail between the river and the South Portland city line. (Staff photo by Duke Harrington)