Cushman's Ridge | Springfield

Nestled between the potato fields and SAGE System gap fillers of Presque Isle to the north and the remains of mill towns dotting the Katahdin Valley corridor to the South, you'll find the somewhat sleepy town of Springfield. However, in the woods off of State Rt 6, you'll find "suburban sprawl" from the time of the Civil War.

The red diamond indicates the old site of School No.6 - for reference

This area attracted my attention because of a forgotten grave yard. To call it 'forgotten' wouldn't quite be accurate. Someone was buried there as late as 2000, although one wonders quite how they managed to thread a thirty foot long Cadillac down a road like that (perhaps the supernatural really is at work up there). More recently, another blogger has raised some questions about this location by recalling some local ghost stories -- the cemetery is on the Ghost Rd, after all.

Old timers claim that a young blonde haired girl was riding her bike along the ghost road when she encountered a woman in a horse and carriage.The woman reportedly stopped to offer the young girl a ride.

The little girl peered into the old woman's bright green eyes and told her she was not allowed to ride with strangers. Upon returning home the frightened girl relayed the story to her parents, who told her the woman was the green eyed witch and to keep her distance.

Sometime later the young girl decided to take another ride on her bike – but she never returned. When her parents set out to find her, all they uncovered was an abandoned wagon with the little girl's bike cast to the side. The little girl and the green eyed witch were nowhere to be found.

-Collected by Nannette Richford

The author has provided several rather colorful anecdotes related to the communities relationship with the cemetery at the Cushman Ridge settlement. Most interesting is the story about a freak storm falling upon a survey crew, as the nearby Mt Jefferson likely isn't tall enough to produce meteorological phenomena like rain shadows. Whether or not you believe in that kind of thing, and personally I don't, it's nonetheless interesting.  

Ghost Road is perhaps a very apt name. Imagery from 1875 shows the location of the cemetery, as well as two adjacent schoolhouses, a 'town farm' and what appears to be a retail establishment named Butterfield & Scribner. In fact, the place looks downright packed compared to its population today.

HistoricMapWorks.com

Note that the area depicted is not the "village" on Rt 6, but is instead the network of 'trails' to the south of Rt 6. The red diamond on the map was added by me, as the intersection of those two unnamed streets is still present, and visible in the photo at the header of this post.

This 'ghost town' is a bit of a different animal than the others. It wasn't a frontier like Patten or Sherman, and the town played no significant defensive role (geographically.) In an effort to track the development and subsequent decline of this area, I've searched the initials/names of the residents listed on the map through Google's newspaper archive search and scoured aerial photos for evidence of ruins. First, the good news -- there is evidence of ruins other than the cemetery.

I have yet to visit this area, these are oddities in the woods proximate to the settlement. The only house I've been able to find that's still standing and labeled on the map from 1875 is below:

I am with holding the coordinates at this point, as I haven't been out there to see whether or not this is a really big camp or if this is exactly what it looks like: A large house in the middle of the woods with no shadows indicating power lines, and no evidence of automobiles. I believe this to be the residence of E. McGuire, judging by the map farther up in the post -- although I understand this may not be abandoned despite having no driveway and no power lines.

Below is another I'm holding onto coordinates for...again, that's awfully big for a camp...and is that a steeple?

Also, there appears to be another structure in the area at [REDACTED FOR NOW]. This one took me a moment to find.

The highlighted object casts a shadow significantly shorter than the trees around it, additionally the tree above it casts a shadow on a uniform, rectangular patch of color. There appears to be a lawn to the south, and two white objects (fenceposts? graves?) to the north. This area does not appear on the map from 1875. 

Of course I do realize that it's entirely possible that I will go out there and encounter folks who just like living away from services and infrastructure, in which case I'll visit the graveyard and be on my way. Even if these houses are occupied, I can still observe the graves of two (Union) Civil War soldiers: Abra(ha)m Kneeland (1772-1846) and 1st Cavalry Sgt Thomas McGinley(1812-1892).

This site is definitely one which I am going to visit this summer.