The dispute over the status of Beaver Ridge Road wages on in the northern Waldo County town of Freedom where property owners on the road are suing the town to determine whether a wooded and overgrown section is public or private.
After examining records from 1823 to 1939, a surveyor engaged by the Select Board concluded the disputed section was discontinued in 1919 and title reverted to the abutting landowners. Some residents who have done their own research believe it is a public way and want access for recreational use — access they say they have had for decades.
Meanwhile, incidents of vandalism have escalated along the road and have been brought to the Select Board’s attention.
Jim Dorsky of Gartley & Dorsky Engineering & Surveying Inc. in Camden delivered his report during a well-attended Select Board meeting on July 13. Reactions were mixed, with residents Heather Donahue and Patrick Terry, in particular, challenging Dorsky’s findings. Among the points of contention is which Dean’s (or Deane’s) Corner is the correct deed reference as a key historical locator of the road.
Both Donahue, the former “Blair Witch Project” actress whom the town recalled from her Select Board seat last year, and Terry have extensively researched the Freedom land records and town government files and said the surveyor had not delved deeply enough into all available historical records. Terry noted, for example, that at one time there were 12 Dean’s corners, or intersections, in Freedom, and he pointed to three in the area of Beaver Ridge Road that call Dorsky’s conclusions into question.
At one point, Terry told Dorsky, “You’re a liar,” for which he later apologized.
A number of residents at the July 13 meeting called for Dorsky to continue his survey work from 1939 to the present. The Select Board last week agreed to do that. Initially the Select Board approved an expenditure of $8,000 for Dorsky’s work.
In an apparently related act of alleged vandalism, several trees were felled with a chainsaw and the branches and logs piled into — and blocking — a drainage ditch. The distance from the outermost edge of one stump to the centerline of the road, measured by landowner Kyle Price, was 35 feet — coincidentally the distance some residents contend is the width of the public easement they believe the town holds. Select Board Chair Laura Greeley said the Public Works Department would handle cleanup.
In the other incident, someone stole a package that had been delivered and placed on the mailbox of Tyler and Catherine Hadyniak, members of the family suing the town to resolve ownership of the road that runs past their property. The thief tore open the box, tossed it aside, and made off with more than $100 worth of maternity supplies (the couple are expecting their second child this summer).
In both instances, those responsible apparently drove in on ATVs. Some local ATV owners are among those residents who maintain Beaver Ridge Road is a public way, and say they have a right to use it for recreational purposes.
Donahue, originally from Pennsylvania, purchased her land in Freedom in 2022, moved there in 2023, and was elected to the Select Board in 2024. She began making public statements about the ownership of and public rights to Beaver Ridge Road that year, and early in 2025 used orange spray paint to mark a number of trees in an area residents said was not Beaver Ridge Road. Donahue disagreed, saying she had marked the trees in conjunction with the pending lawsuit. Her actions triggered a recall petition and she was voted out in April 2025. Her attempt to regain a Select Board seat earlier this year failed at the ballot box.
Donahue’s public statements ultimately led the Hadyniak family to sue the town to resolve the issue of whether the 1.5-mile section of Beaver Ridge Road is public or private. Tyler’s twin brother Kyle and their parents, Chuck and Lynn, filed the lawsuit in July 2024 in Waldo County Superior Court, where it is pending. Among evidence submitted in the lawsuit are deeds from 1935, 1943 and 1951 that describe that portion of the road as “discontinued.” The Hadyniak family, including Chuck’s parents, moved from New Jersey to Freedom about 30 years ago.
Tyler Hadyniak, an attorney representing his family, told the Midcoast Villager, “The law is clear that a discontinuance at that time (1919) meant that all rights to the road reverted to the abutting landowners and did not leave a public easement.”
Donahue told the Villager that Dorsky’s presentation “raises significant historical and factual questions that deserve careful review,” noting that Dorsky’s analysis “appears to rest on identifying the wrong ‘Deane’s Corner,’ despite historical evidence indicating that the 1919 discontinuance referred to a road beside what is now Spring Road, not Beaver Ridge Road.”
The Villager made text and email requests for comment to Greeley but received no response. During the board’s Monday meeting, Greeley said she was “just ignoring the many emails” she “received from Carolyn Zachary of the Midcoast Villager.”
This story appears through a media partnership with Midcoast Villager.