The Woodland Castle | Greenbush

The Woodland Castle: A resort half a hour north of Old town

If you follow old rail routes through Old Town, Milford, Costigan, Greenbush, Olamon, Howland, Enfield, Lincoln...etc... you'll inevitably stumble across evidence of bygone attractions peppering these towns and their histories. Above is a hotel either called the "Woodland Castle" or "American House" depending who and when you ask --  an interesting resort type property that was remembered merely as an abandoned structure by many Gen X-er locals (it was torn down before Gen Y could notice...) and remembered fondly by the Boomers and Silent Generation as *the* destination between Lincoln and Old Town.

According to local lore found in a Facebook thread, back when this attraction was built, B-17s were leaving Bangor for Europe, log drives on the river were still legal, Old Town was still making canoes, textiles & solo cups before they were called solo cups. A thread on the Facebook group "You know you grew up in [REDACTED] when" had uncovered some interesting memories of locals regarding this attraction:

 

The user in red is a Gen Xer, the remainder are Baby Boomers or older. Even as a child, I remember seeing the remains of this structure as I passed it on the school bus -- I had never known that over its history it had been a resort, a single family housing unit, and an abandoned structure for children of the 1980s to "scare the crap out of each other" in.

Scant information about this is available online -- there's not even anything on MaineMemory.net, which is an otherwise invaluable resource.Also, there's nothing left to explore -- the thing was torn down in the early 1990s. The turnout off of the main road was where the "castle" used to be, before it was demolished and burned.

© USGS

Is it so simple as an open and shut "built in the 40s and torn down in the 90s?" Or was there a deeper history behind this odd structure halfway between Bangor and Lincoln? The sites proximity to some railroad tracks made me dig a little deeper.

An atlas from 1875 shows the European & North American RR to have the same grade as the rail road tracks that currently run behind the site today. The Cardville road is visible, as is Cow island -- the island that is directly across the river from this location. 

HistoricMapWorks

N. Ellingwood Hotel? Depot? The older woman from the pictured Facebook thread may have been wrong. The town's local history page verifies the existence of "Ellingwood Hotel" in the area and indicates that this area is where the "boom house" (for logging runs) was nearby. Additionally, a New England Business Directory indicates that there was a hotel on this property (by verification of the proprietor's name) as far back as 1865. This stretch of Rt 2 could have been quite the industrial area compared to the lonely bunch of houses standing there nwo.

N. Ellingwood  Hotel apparently stands for Nathan Ellingwood Hotel according to the New England Business Directory & Gazetteer for 1865. He was also the postmaster. The actual name of the hotel was "American House" according to the document. In fact, the History of Penobscot county verifies that a hotel existed between the "Boom house" on lower river rd, and "School No 2", which are on either side of this site. Nothing exists there anymore but houses. I have found no photographs, save for the one at the post header. I've found that Ellingwood's daughter may have been someone else's "domestic servant" at 16...but very little after that.

Even if the place was standing in ruins it couldn't be more completely abandoned than it is now. With as many stories as a hotel operating for that long in a small town could gather, memories of hundreds exist only in photographs in dusty shoeboxes and half remembered images of those passing by. When this property was owned by the Ellingwood's, Greenbush had 682 people (1880 census). By the time the building pictured above was built, the town had dwindled to 439 (1940).

County Ghosts: The Patten & Sherman Railroad

Lewiston Evening Journal, 1893

Past some dilapidated buildings in an old mill town (bought from Massachusetts for $1.75 an acre in 1832 and then described as "cosmopolitan" by the Lewiston Daily Sun in 1894) in Northern Maine is a patch of ground that was big news in 1895. ...

But first, some background: if you're going North to Limestone or Houlton and don't want to use the Interstate -- you're going to be using Route 11. Rt 11 goes through a number of mill towns which have definitely seen better days. The wilderness rd will wind through Stacyville (containing Sherman Station and Mills), Mt Chase and Patten. While these places aren't ghost towns, spectres of the past lurk everywhere - yearning for you to recognize the fact that these places were once centers of commerce that have been left behind.

Seavey's general store in 1910. One of 3 stores in the town at the time. Top: Google Earth 2007.

This handful of (what were at the time) frontier timber, ice harvesting, and agrarian towns have seen booms, busts and murders that would be at home in the history pages of the Lewistons, Bangors, and Lincoln's. This post isn't going to cover all of the towns along the Aroostook Scenic Highway corridor - but rather will be focused on Sherman Mills & Sherman Station.

As you exit the interstate way up around exit 276, going to the right will take you to Sherman Mills and going to the left will take you to Sherman Station. Sherman mills once had a booming timber economy at the turn of the century, with Sherman Station acting as its logistical port, so to speak. By the late 19th century, Sherman Mills was a town to watch -- as residents from all over the state would read about the small town's developments in the circulation of the Lewiston Sun Journal. Most of the outlook from this period is agricultural.

In fact, Sherman was one of the towns regularly corresponding with the Lewiston Daily Sun in that era -- As you can see below, it was full of productive woods and tradesmen, and even had some small evidence of social issues within its borders. I'd say a week in Northern Maine where someone becomes "violently insane" and someone else pokes their eye out was an exciting one!

The rail road that connected Sherman to Patten and then from Patten to points elsewhere brought life to this small town whose survivors still make their livings on its heavily worn streets. It's the largest recognizable feature -- a crossing to a mill abutted by abandoned warehouse buildings who last saw use (according to faded signage) in the mid to late 1980s.

These three buildings are what remains, as you drive by you can see that several of the buildings have extensive facades on their backsides (away from the road) that have since fallen. In the aerial above, you can also see the outline of a foundation of a building that once would have been involved in the job of moving wares from the mills in the area to points elsewhere.

You used to be able to find a lot more 'points elsewhere' than you would in the current time, as illustrated in the aerial photo below that there was additional track about 1/4 mile past this station, but it has since been removed.

The section of track in the picture above that would have headed north actually heads through the woods all the way to "Station Rd" in Patten, creating the rather short "Patten and Sherman Railroad", later to be absorbed by the Bangor & Aroostook. The Annual Report of state Railroad Commissioners from 1895 indicates that this extension was built on the cusp of the 20th century to extend the line six miles to a "thriving" town of Patten. The railroad grade has since been turned into a walking trail; otherwise all that remains of it is a welding business on Potato Ln in Patten, and this triangle of railroad grades in the woods behind some abandoned buildings in Sherman.

In addition to the town's rail history, several other aspects have been manifest in the return of man made structure to nature.

Sherman's 1 room schoolhouse, in 1985. (C) MaineEncyclopedia.com

An abandoned house between Sherman and Patten, photographed 2014 (Original Content)

An abandoned mid-century storefront. Photographed 2014 (Original Content)

Sherman continued to be an important piece of the Northern Maine puzzle until the early 1990s, when the mills in town were shut down and sold off on a rainy morning, piece by piece, to people 'from away' while the townspeople watched their future broken into pieces, bought by strangers and re-sold.

Driving through the area you get an overwhelming sense that something used to be here, and you'd be right.

Buck's Mills | Bucksport

Fair warning: this post is quite image - heavy and info-thin.

On the back roads of Bucksport you'll find many charming places past their prime; one such place is the remnants of Buck's mills. Built in the 1700s for laborer housing, turned into a general store some time thereafter, and purchased by the family that currently owns it in 1901, the house overlooks a waterway that once powered three water wheels and provided ice for refrigeration.

Part of one of the original water wheel/dam structures still exists.

Machine piece adjacent to dam. Possible axle component.

By mid century, the building had become a dairy farm. Most of what's left behind is from this period in the property's history.

The foundation of the dairy. Behind it is the remains of the farm workshop.

Cow shit goes in here.

Found inside the remains of the workshop.

A tractor onsite. Note the vice in the foreground.

Unidentified equipment by the open stone well.

Mowing blades overtaken by vegetation.

Within the thicket behind the tractor was all manner of tools with several workbenches and some interesting surprises. The workshop must have been a shack, as there was some remains of a roof, and a door -- but only partial waist-high walls.

A forgotten Motorola television

An 8 track player

Art deco switch.

Remnants of the workshop.

The interior of the building had been mostly gutted as it has been unoccupied since the early 1990s. Evidence of its 1700s era construction remain, as many of the exposed beams were rough hewn and contained pegs.

The owner uses the rooms for storage, mostly.

We found old photos on a chest upstairs, a reminder that when you go into places like these, you're exploring bits and pieces of a strangers life...