Radio Script #380

Little Talks on Common Things

May 11, 1958

There is one subject I believe we have never discussed on this program in all the ten years of these broadcasts. That is the subject of Maine’s deserted villages. I want to tell you about one of them tonight. Then I hope you listeners can inform me about others which might well be included in future broadcasts.

It was exactly one hundred years ago, in 1858, that one such Maine hamlet was finally abandoned. About the time that Maine became a state, a few settlers located at a place up in Piscataquis County, five miles south of Greenville, where the old stage road from Monson to Greenville crossed Little Wilson Stream. There in 1824, Nelson Savage built a saw mill, using the swift current of the stream for power. Other families arrived, and the inhabitants formed the town of Wilson, although the place was more popularly known as Savage’s Mills.

For a time the mill prospered, but with the decline in the lumber business following the panic of 1837, business became poor. People began to move away, and the burden of conducting an organized town became too great. In 1848 the town of Wilson was divided among the towns of Greenville, Shirley and Elliotsville. The community struggled on for another ten years, but finally in 1858 the last family had moved away, and shortly afterward the old stage road was abandoned, and a new road built along very nearly the present route of the state highway.

While the automobile driver has to go out of his way to see the old ruins of Savage’s Mills, many a foot-traveler sees it every year, for it is on the famous way known to hikers as the Appalachian Trail. From Monson the trail follows Highway 15 north for about a mile. Then it turns right onto a dirt road for several miles. In front of the old Watson House it turns across an overgrown field into the woods where it comes to the old, abandoned stage road. Soon the hiker comes to the ruined abutments at Savage’s Mill, where 125 years ago there were more than 30 families and the busy hum of industry. Now the only sound is the pleasant rippling of Wilson Stream.

Recent news that the Maine Central Railroad had petitioned to remove all passenger trains from its White Mountain Division brought back fond memories. For the Mountain Division was the first broad gauge railroad I ever knew. As I have often told you on this program, I was a narrow gauge boy, born and brought up in Bridgton, which boasted of one of the earliest two-foot railroads built in Maine.

When Bridgton folk wanted to go to Portland at the turn of the century, 58 years ago, they boarded the narrow gauge train at Bridgton Station, sat in one of the single seats — the car wasn’t wide enough for doubles — in one or the other of the B & S R’s two passenger cars, the Pondicherry and the Mt. Pleasant. It took an hour,with good luck, for the mixed train one passenger car, one baggage, express and mail car, and half a dozen freight cars — to reach Bridgton Junction, passing on the way through Sandy Creek, South Bridgton, Perley’s Mills, Hancock Pond and Rankin’s Mills.

At Bridgton Junction the passengers waited for the down train of the Maine Central’s Mountain Division. How proud I used to be as I sat beside my father in one of the double seats of that big train. To go from the B & S R’s very narrow gauge cars to the big cars of the Maine Central was definite social promotion for any small boy. Then off we would go through West Baldwin, Steep Falls, Cornish, Sebago Lake, South Windham and Cumberland Mills, into what seemed to any small boy as palatial: Portland’s Union Station. Now small boys will have that trip no more. The narrow gauge has been gone for twenty years, and soon there will be no more passenger trains on the Mountain Division itself.

Strange as it seems, as I now look back upon it, I was a grown man before I ever rode north of Bridgton on the Maine Central IS Mountain Division. I knew from the old time tables that beyond the Junction there were stations at Hiram, Brownfield, Fryeburg, Conway, Intervale and Bartlett, and I had been told about the marvelous engineering job of pushing that road through Crawford Notch in the White Mountains.

Of course, as a boy, I went often to Fryeburg, and occasionally to Hiram and Brownfield, but I always went by way of horse and buggy, not by train. As for Conway and Bartlett and Crawford Notch, they were unknown places all through my boyhood days. When, at last, some time after my 21st birthday, I rode the Mountain Division train all the way from Portland to St. Johnsbury, I learned what a wonderful scenic route it was.

Speaking of the Maine Central, do you know how that railroad got started? The Civil War had been going on for more than a year when, on October 28, 1862 two railroads were consolidated to form a road with a new name, the Maine Central. Those two roads were the Androscoggin and Kennebec, which in 1849 had run its first train through from Danville Junction to Waterville, over what is now called the back road. The other railroad in the merger was the Penobscot and Kennebec, which was physically an extension of the Androscoggin and Kennebec from Waterville to Bangor. Both roads had the extra-wide gauge of 5 feet 6 inches, competing with the Portland and Kennebec and the Somerset and Kennebec, which were 4 feet 8t inches wide. Some night on this program I want to tell you about that famous battle of the gauges.

Speaking of 1862, when the Maine Central was first organized, leads me to mention some of the laws passed by the Maine Legislature in 1861, just two or three months before the guns of Fort Sumter proclaimed the opening of the Civil War. One of those 1861 laws had to do with the preparation of public school teachers — a very live topic 97 years later in 1958. In 1860 the Legislature had passed an act providing for the establishment of normal training courses in existing Maine Academies, and each school where such a course was approved would receive $200 from the State. Not $200 per pupil, but a total of $200 for giving the course. That early provision was modest indeed. It provided for only one term of ten weeks devoted to instruction in teaching. But evidently the course was very loosely conducted in some of the academies, for the following Legislature in 1861 passed an amendment to the act, which demanded that the Superintendent of Schools in the town in which a course had been established must certify that the course was satisfactory before the school could get the $200. The amendment also provided that the Superintendent “shall persecute such qualifications for admissions to this course as shall enable the students to pursue it with uniformity and success”. The law further stipulated that “each student shall pay for instruction in the normal course the sum of $3.00”.

Well, anyhow, that was the beginning of formal teacher training in Maine the first meager beginnings of a program that led to the establishment of our state normal schools and later of our degree-granting state teachers colleges. Probably some of our Maine towns still levy taxes on such things as pianos and refrigerators. It used to be a common practice. That explains a law passed in 1861 which read: “In addition to the property now exempted by law from taxation, or from sale or levy on execution, there shall be exempted one sewing machine of a value not exceeding $50, kept for the family’s actual use.”

So anxious was that 1861 Legislature to encourage railroads in eastern and northern Maine that they passed what was entitled “An Act to Aid the Aroostook Railroad”. The statute provided that the money from future sale of public lands in Aroostook and Penobscot counties, except lands set aside for schools and other specific purposes, should be set aside for the use of the Aroostook Railroad Company. Furthermore the law said: “The moneys hereafter received on account of claims of this state upon the United States because of the Northeastern Boundary question shall be set aside for use of the Aroostook Rail road Company.”

Of course the Legislature laid down certain definite provisions. First, from Mattawamkeag the Railroad Company had to locate a branch extending north as far as Houlton, and another branch from some point between Milford and Mattawamkeag to the eastern boundary of the state, so as most conveniently to connect with the European and North American Railway to New Brunswick.

It was further. provided that, as soon as the Aroostook Railroad Company should have completed their line from Old Town or Milford to Mattawamkeag and have it in running order, then all the proceeds of Aroostook and Penobscot land sales and claims on the federal government should be pledged to aid the construction of the two branches, in the amount of $5,000 per mile.

The City of Bangor had a big stake in the project. The final section of the law read: “The grants mentioned shall take effect after the City of Bangor shall have voted to loan the credit of the city and not before.” The whole plan was carefully worked out to try to hasten railroad service into Aroostook. But it did not come to pass quite as it was planned. Railroad penetration into Aroostook had to wait for many years. Instead of supporting the Aroostook venture, as it was expected to do, the foreign-owned European and North American got busy on its own.

In 1863 it purchased the Penobscot Railroad, which had partially graded a right of way between Bangor and Milford, but had not yet laid any track. It was not until 1868 that John Poor, builder of the Grand Trunk, was able to complete construction of the European and North American from Bangor to Milford. But after that the work was rushed along so that, before the end of the year 1869, trains could come from Bangor to Mattawamkeag. In 1871 the road reached its terminus at Vanceboro. Instead of the few thousand acres which the legislature had agreed to give the Aroostook Railroad Company in 1861, the foreign capitalized European and North American received a full half million acres of Maine land.

By 1890 many of the lines, including the European and North American had been merged into the Maine Central systems, but even then there was no through rail transportation into Aroostook County, although there were short lines within the county itself, one of which connected with a Canadian road.

In 1891 a corporation called the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad obtained a charter from the Maine Legislature. It started activities the next year, not by construction, but by leasing the Bangor and Piscataquis Railroad to Greenville and to Katahdin Iron Works through Brownville Junction. In 1893 the B & A built through to Houlton, connecting with the Maine Central at Old Town. In 1895 the road was extended from Houlton to Caribou and Fort Fairfield. Finally, just before the turn of the century, in the fall of 1899, the road reached the northern border at Van Buren. In 1905 it made its way to sea by building a line from Northern Maine Junction to Searsport.

Before the new century was ten years old, the wishes of those Maine legislators of 1861 had at last been realized. Aroostook not only had a railroad, entering both sides of the big county, but she had one of the most prosperous railroads ;n the United States.

Year: 1958