Radio Script #859

Little Talks on Common Things
September 20, 1970

Today I want to tell you a bit about the history of transportation in Maine, the tremendous transition from ox-cart to automobile.

As you well know, the earliest travel in Maine was by water, along the coast and up the major rivers. Overland travel was at first entirely on foot. That is the way Elihu Bowerman first went from Ticonic Falls to North Fairfield, where he built his isolated cabin. It was the way also that William Barrows and his brother went from West Minot to Hebron, carrying sawed boards on their backs. Both those journeys were made before 1790. The next step was to blaze a trail wide enough for a horse to get through. Over such trails a man would often walk, leading the horse, on which rode the wife with a baby in her arms, though sometimes both rode, with the woman on a pillion. The third step in road making was to clear out rocks and stumps sufficiently for one of the old two-wheeled carts to get through. Those carts had enormous wheels, raising the axles high enough for the vehicle to pass over smaller rocks and stumps.

Four wheeled wagons first appeared in Augusta in 1800. Forty years earlier, in 1760, the two-wheeled gig, soon a popular passenger carrier, had reached Portland.

At first mail was carried from town to town on horseback, but in 1787 wagons drawn by horses began to be used on the mail routes. They were soon followed by the enclosed stage coach.

The first regular, scheduled stage route in Maine was the line from Portsmouth to Portland. The stage left Portsmouth early in the morning and stayed overnight at a tavern in Kennebunk. On the second day, if it did not get stuck in the mud, the stage got as far as Stroudwater, reaching Portland the third forenoon. By 1790 the stage made three trips a week between Portland and Portsmouth, connecting in the New Hampshire town with the stage to Boston. In 1800 it took four days to make the whole trip through from Portland to Boston.

The first stage to run east of Portland was from that place to Hallowell in 1793. Strangely, that line did not go directly to Hallowell from Brunswick, but circuited by way of Bath, for that place was one of Maine’s largest communities at the time and the chief ship building center east of Portland. Soon after 1800 a daily stage ran between Portland and Augusta. Hallowell was a center of Maine transportation and in 1800 was one of Maine’s most populous towns. From Hallowell stages, meeting the ships landing there, ran to Farmington, Norridgewock, Waterville and Skowhegan. Other stages connected Bangor and Belfast, competing with the river boats. By 1823 Portland was connected by stage lines with all important points in Maine, and in 1825 a line was opened to the White Mountains.

The first steamboat to operate in Maine was the Alpha in 1816. It was not long after that before there were regular steamer runs from Portland to Boston, and to Bath, Hallowell and Augusta. The steamer Portland, built in 1835, was the first Maine boat to use coal.

Maine got its first charter for a railroad in 1832, for three-fourths of a mile of track between Calais and Milltown. Shortly after, in the same year, was chartered the Bangor and Old Town, which was actually built first and was in operation a few months before the Calais road was finished. Both roads were built to transport lumber, not to accommodate passengers. Not until ten years later, in 1842, did Maine get a passenger railroad. It was called the Portland, Saco and Portsmouth, and connected at the latter place with a line to Boston. In the next year, 1843, the Boston and Maine built through Dover to Berwick Junction and eventually through to Portland over what later became the western division of the B & M.

In 1848 Maine got its first rail connection with Canada. The enterprising railroad promoter, John Poor, had succeeded in getting backing and Canadian approval for a railroad to connect Montreal with an open winter port on the Atlantic Ocean. Boston interests fought hard, but Poor won the battle for Portland. At the same time plans were under way for a railroad through to Waterville. Again Poor was instrumental in having that road come by way of Lewiston, then up the west side of the lakes, rather than up the Kennebec through Augusta. That was the Androscoggin and Kennebec Railroad, whose first train reached Waterville in November, 1849. The A & K trains had their own track from Waterville to Danville Junction, then ran over Grand Trunk tracks into Portland.

By 1850 Maine had nine active railroads. Two, the Boston and Maine, and the Eastern Railroad, operated west of Portland and the Grand Trunk ran into Canada. Four other steam roads had their tracks entirely within Maine. They were the Bangor and Piscataquis from Bangor to Old Town; the Androscoggin and Kennebec from Danville Junction to Waterville; the Buckfield branch of the Grand Trunk, connecting Buckfield with Mechanic Falls; the Franklin Railroad from Middle Falls to Machiasport; the Kennebec and Portland to Brunswick and Bath. Two of the roads were not operated by steam. The Calais and Baring, a six mile line on the Bay of Fundy, was a horse railroad, and most unique of all was a three mile line at Northeast Carryon Moosehead Lake, whose motive power was an ox.

Ten years later in 1860 Maine had the Penobscot and Kennebec from Waterville to Bangor; the Somerset and Kennebec from Augusta through Waterville to Skowhegan; the Androscoggin from Leeds Junction to Farmington; the Portland and Oxford Central from Mechanic Falls to Canton. Ten more years saw the addition of the Portland and Rochester, the Belfast and Moosehead Lake, the European and North American, and the Portland and Ogdensburg (later the Mountain Division of the Maine Central). By 1880 all of these roads and several others had been consolidated into the Maine Central system.

In the 1880’s came the first of Maine’s famous narrow gauge railroads, popularly called the two-footers. The first of those little wigglers was the Sandy River, built to connect with the lumber towns above Farmington. Soon followed by four other little narrow gauge lines in the same region, it consolidated them all into the Sandy River and Rangeley Lakes, said to be the only two-footer in the nation that ever operated a parlor car. The Sandy River was soon followed by the Bridgton and Saco River, connecting with the Portland and Ogdensburg at Hiram. Later came the Kennebec Central from Randolph to Togus; the Wiscasset and Quebec, that had a branch from Weeks Mills into Winslow, off the main line that went through to Albion and the Monson Railroad, built to get slate out of the quarries to a main line junction.

As early as 1850 Maine’s largest city, Portland, introduced a kind of public street transportation in the form of what were called omnibuses, big horse-drawn vehicles like stages. In 1860 tracks were laid for horse cars in Portland, and three years later there were horse cars in Lewiston. The Portland Railway Company was the first in Maine to be electrified in 1889. In rapid succession came the Biddeford and Saco, the Waterville and Fairfield, the Gardiner and Augusta, and other short lines connecting nearby places as well as through the streets of a single city.

Now both the passenger steam trains and the electric trolleys are gone. But 45 years ago in 1925, this is what a Maine newspaper had to say: “Today Maine has, in addition to a modern railroad system, an excellent highway network of hard paved and high class gravel roads, over which thousands of motor cars, pleasure and commercial vehicles make their way during the full twelve months of the year. We are amazed at the luxurious, rapid methods of travel today, and we wonder what its mode and extent will be 50 years hence.”

Well, 45 of those fifty years have already passed, and in 1970 the travel conditions of 1925 seem woefully obsolete. That statement of 1925 referred to “high class gravel roads”. Today with even back country roads tarred, if not fully paved, we complain bitterly if we even encounter a gravel road. In 1925 no one journeyed anywhere by air. It took several days by the fastest trains to cross the continent. Ten years ago, in 1960, I did it by air in five hours from Boston to San Francisco, with a single stop at Chicago. Now that time has been further reduced. In 1926 Maine had not a single four-lane highway. Now there are four lanes of U.S. 95 on the Maine Turnpike from Kittery to beyond Orono, and soon the new two lanes from there to Houlton will be widened to four. Forty years ago one needed three full days, sometimes even longer, to drive a car from Waterville to Washington, D.C. Now it is done easily with a single overnight stop, and a really daring driver can make it in one long day.

When I brought my family from Portland to Waterville in the summer of 1923, the only paved road was the 16 mile stretch from Portland to Gray. All the rest was gravel or simple dirt. No wonder it took me nearly five hours to drive from Portland to Waterville, a trip we now make easily in an hour and a half. Well, anyhow, that is a partial answer to the implied query of that writer in 1925: “We wonder what the mode and extent of travel will be fifty years from now.” As to what it will be after another 50 years in 2020, we are just as puzzled as was that fellow in 1925.

As we close today, let me tell you about a letter written in 1829 concerning the building of the State House in Augusta. In June, 1829 construction was so far ahead of schedule that William King, who had been Maine’s first governor in 1820, was able to write his 1829 successor, Enoch Lincoln, as follows: “Since my arrival in Augusta last week, I find there is a general impression that the corner stone of the State House is to be laid on the 4th day of July. When I was last in Portland I was inclined to believe we could not do this so early. Now I find the business in such a state of forwardness that we can be ready to lay the corner stone on the 4th.

“If your government considers it advisable to have a suitable ceremony, an appropriation to meet expenses will be necessary. Without intending to express any opinion myself. I shall be at Augusta and ready to execute any instructions for the occasion that I may receive from you.

“I am, Sir, respectfully, your our servant, Wm. King.”

Year: 1970