While abandoned dwellings easily tell the tale of a singular household in what's left behind, industrial abandonments don't often have that luxury. No discarded materiel memories grace its floors. A place like this loses life every time someone walks through its doors "for the last time." Our routines, our frustrations, shreds of optimism and every gentle feeling of security poured into a place like this disappears forever in the face of a changing world.
You can't graduate from high school and find yourself stable enough to start a new life in your hometown anymore. I've found 'help wanted' ads ranging in date from the late 1970s up through the early 2000's on this site, with no real definitive opening and shut-down dates found. There are
references in the mid 1980s to the general downturn of the timber industry associated with this site, but nothing hard. On the flip side, one year after the manager effectively saying 'its the worst it's been since the 30s', we have
extensive hiring activity at this site for all positions.
 |
| The kiln structure |
What can be pieced together is that this industrial site appears to have been in its prime in the 1980s considering the number of want ads posted by Old Town Lumber during the time. Even in the 1990s it had continued operations and a little bit of notoriety by participating in some rather unconventional projects -- in 1995 its
kilns were used to dry out a portion of a
shipwrecked vessel built in the Bangor area in 1851 and it made the news for processing Russian imported wood
just a year earlier.
 |
| Old Town Lumber Warehouse |
 |
| Old Town Lumber Facility - Abandoned |
The 2000's saw
some attempts at modernization but any upgrades were negated by a rather severe
fire event in 2004 that claimed an entire building and shut down the Bennoch Road for quite some time. The site was
auctioned off in February of 2010, no buyer information provided.
No comments:
Post a Comment