The name "Androscoggin" comes from the Eastern Abenaki term Ammoscongon, which referred to the entire portion of the river north of the Great Falls in Lewiston, Maine.

The average Androscoggin drop of eight feet per mile (1.5m per km) made it an excellent source of water power encouraging development of the cities of Berlin, New Hampshire, and Lewiston and Auburn, Maine, and the Maine towns of Brunswick, Topsham, Lisbon Falls, Livermore Falls, Chisholm, Mexico, Rumford and Bethel.

[13] The pollution became so severe that until very recently, one 14-mile (23 km) stretch required oxygen bubblers to prevent fish from suffocating.

[12] As of May 2007, environmental groups had a lawsuit pending, in an attempt to force the paper mills located along the river to clean their waste streams.

It is unknown what impacts, either negative or positive, the explosion and the mill's indefinite closing will have on water quality.

[14][15] The Androscoggin begins in Errol, New Hampshire, where the Magalloway River joins the outlet of Umbagog Lake.

The river flows generally south but with numerous bends past the towns of Errol and Milan and the city of Berlin before turning east at the town of Gorham, New Hampshire, to cut across the northern end of the White Mountains and enter Maine.

The upper section of the river offers good fly fishing for brook, rainbow and brown trout.

As a result of these changes, the trout and salmon fisheries vanish almost entirely in the central and lower portions of the river.

Other species found in the lower portions include redbreast sunfish, yellow perch, and white suckers.