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The Maxwell Trail is named after Sir George Maxwell,
the British Superintendent of Ulu Pahang in 1896/97
and later Chief Secretary of the Federated Malay States
in 1920. It was during his tenure as the Superintendent
of Ulu Pahang (Sir Hugh Clifford was then the British
Resident of Pahang and residing in Pekan) that the
development of Fraser’s Hill took place. Both
he and his wife and another friend, Lady Guillemard,
took the greatest interest in the development of the
hill station. In fact, Lady Maxwell Road, stretching
from the roundabout off the Steakhouse to the Lodge,
and Lady Guillemard Road starting at the town centre
to the junction of Gridle Road in Peninjau Hill, were
tributes to the two determined ladies who contributed
to the progress of Fraser’s Hill. |
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trail begins at an opening immediately off the boundary
of Whittington Bungalow (owned by Guthrie Group) and
Muar Cottage (owned by the New Straits Times), passes
Cicely Bungalow (now renamed Kuantan Bungalow) and
the Staff House (Jerantut) before taking a right turn
below the Lodge and descends treacherously downhill
past the Fraser’s Pine Resort condominiums to
the compound of Tamil school (built in 1923, it is
the oldest school in Fraser’s Hill) at the tail
of Quarry Road. On clear days, parts of the two-kilometer
trail especially below the Lodge, provide panoramic
views of the distant valleys of Tras and Tranum with
the foothills bordering the cultivated plains and
parts of the Titiwangsa Range to the east and the
majestic Peninjau Hill clustered by satellite dishes
mounted on lofty steel towers, to the southeast. The
200-acre jungle plot allocated to the Forest Research
Institute of Malaysia for forestry research purposes
is located on the hill opposite
The trail was opened in the last
few months of the Great War of 1919 by laborers, then
residing at the ‘Labor Lines’ (now Fraser’s
Pine Resort condominiums), halfway at Quarry Road,
to enable them to listen to the news of the war from
the only radio owned by E.J Hancocks, an English miner
residing at Whittington Bungalow. The trail became
absolute obscure when the Valley Road connecting Glen
junction to Lady Maxwell Road was completed and used
in 1926. The trail was completely abandoned in 1980,
when the ‘Labor Lines’ were relocated
to Taman Sungai Hijau, to make way for the construction
of the Fraser’s Pine Resort condominiums. The
trail was reopened in early 1993 as an extension to
the Bishop Trail.
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