The Golden Road is a 96-mile (154 km) private road built by the Great Northern Paper Company that stretches from the St. Zacharie Border Crossing to its former mill at Millinocket, Maine.
The road, which parallels the West Branch of the Penobscot River, was built between 1969 and 1972 to bring raw wood to the mill from the company's 2.1 million acres (8,500 km2) of woodland in the Maine North Woods.
Great Northern had always allowed private drivers access to the road (except for the portion next to the mill) and it is a major thoroughfare into the North Woods for sportsmen and white water paddlers on the Penobscot.
[citation needed] Great Northern's economic hold on the road has been greatly diminished, and it has announced plans to tear down almost all of the buildings at the Millinocket mill.
A proposal in 2007 for the state of Maine to investigate acquiring the road was defeated.