July 4, 2026 3 AM

Northern Lights Over the Maple Ridge Schoolhouse: A Bucket List Night in Harrison, Maine

I’ve been wanting this old school house in Harrison with the Northern Lights over it for a long time, but things just didn’t work out. This night was sketchy with an almost full moon, but the numbers were too strong to ignore. So I jumped in the car, stopped at a few spots seeing lights on the way, and rolled up here at 2:50 AM, just in time for these massive pillars to light up the sky over this epic landmark. I was in awe just being there in that moment.  The property is so haunting and beautiful at the same time.  With the almost full moon it almost felt like daylight.  I stayed taking a few different angles until daylight drowned out the aurora and I drove 2 hours and 15 minutes back home.

The Maple Ridge Schoolhouse

This building is the Maple Ridge Schoolhouse, a one-room school that has stood alone in an open field in Harrison for generations. Like thousands of similar schoolhouses once scattered across rural Maine, it dates back to an era when small farming communities educated their children close to home, in a single building shared by every grade. Most of these one-room schools disappeared long ago as towns consolidated into larger districts, but a handful, like this one, survived, and Maple Ridge has become something of a local icon precisely because it didn’t.

Set against the rolling hills near Long Lake and Crystal Lake in Maine’s Lakes Region, the schoolhouse has drawn photographers for years, especially at sunset and sunrise when warm light pours through its old windows. Add a rare aurora borealis display like the one on this July night, with the Kp index strong enough to push visible pillars this far south, and it becomes the kind of shot that photographers plan around for years before it finally comes together.