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).