Odds and Ends From The MUSEUM!
“Maine’s Magic City – Millinocket. A Wonderous Town Built in Almost a Day and a Night Alone” is the headline in the Lewiston Weekly Journal, Oct. 26, 1899. The full, front-page story, in very small print, also has several photographs.
The article begins by reporting on the rumors of the past few months. Bids were appearing in state wide newspapers for people to build 100 cottages, plus stores and hotels. Excursion trains brought the curious to see this new enterprise. Unemployed men and others seeking a change and the draw of higher wages were eager to get to the new town. Businessmen were drawn here to set up shop. Sportsmen (and ladies) already were coming by train to Norcross and disembarking to travel by water to various sporting camps.
The B & A RR passed by this area on its way to Aroostook County (as of c1892). As there was no town here, there was no station, but the news article uses that term when people started disembarking from the train here.
The newspaper states “On stepping off at Millinocket station you are in the midst of such numbers of men that the first impression is that of being landed in a city station or some village station where the townspeople have gathered to see the train come in. A few women and also a few children racing and playing hide and seek among the groups of men are also there. The old station is a little low shanty, hardly high enough to enter. It was built for a wayside station, as a mere accommodation for a few sportsmen and woodsmen, as shelter for a lonely bachelor reporter to give orders to trains when snow bound. On one side there is this little open front eating house, where a lunch or cold drink can be had. And on the other side are shanties with a shed roof, open toward the railroad, with bough beds for the many stranded men who may need a night’s rest.
When the train pulls out the gloomy outlook disappears. Across the track is a busy scene. There is a large freight house already completed. Far up to the left is a large coal shed and a round house well under way. And down to the right is a water tank, railway scales and the foundation upon which a modern station is to be erected immediately. About these buildings the grounds are being rapidly graded for laying nine side tracks, each one-half mile long. When one sees this outlay and realizes that the Bangor and Aroostook is putting in sixty thousand dollars to furnish railroad accommodations for this projected town, the reports so long heard are seen to have a solid basis.”
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