Lumber and the North Woods, The Industry That Shaped the Interior

In the eighteen thirties and eighteen forties, the Penobscot River carried more lumber to tidewater than any river in the world. That is not a regional boast. It is a documented fact about the global timber trade. The mills at Bangor, sitting at the head of navigation on the Penobscot, processed logs floated down from the forests of the interior, and the city grew rich and rowdy on the proceeds. At its peak, Bangor was the lumber capital of the world.

The North Woods of Maine, the roughly ten million acres of unorganized territory that covers the northern half of the state, was the engine. Loggers pushed deeper into the forest each winter, following the rivers north, establishing camps in the spruce and fir stands that stretched toward Canada. The work was brutal, seasonal, and dangerous. Men drove logs downriver in spring freshets, riding the floating mass with peaveys and pike poles, clearing jams that could back up a river for miles. The log drive on the Penobscot was an annual spectacle and an annual hazard. Men drowned every season.

The timber barons of Bangor accumulated fortunes that built the city's elegant Federal and Greek Revival mansions, many of which still stand. What the industry did to the forest was comprehensive. By the eighteen eighties, the accessible white pine stands that had made Maine the premier lumber source were largely cut. The industry shifted toward spruce and fir for pulp and paper, which requires less-mature timber and generates a different kind of economy, one organized around paper mills rather than sawmills, around chemistry rather than carpentry.

The Great Northern Paper Company, founded in eighteen ninety-seven, eventually controlled more than two million acres of Maine timberland. Towns like Millinocket and East Millinocket were built specifically to house and feed the mill workers. When the paper industry contracted in the late twentieth century, those towns contracted with it. The North Woods economy today is still reckoning with what comes after industrial forestry, a question that does not have a clean answer.