Military Plane Crash Sites.

Riceville | Township 39

In the vast swaths of rural nothingness that comprises a good chunk of everything north of Route 9, is an overgrown ghost town that exists as a relic of the time when a company would open up an industrial site and practically build a settlement around it. In this case the industry was hide tanning, and the time was the late 1800s. A ghost town that used to be home to a large tannery...and it was almost a coal town.

Consider it a bit like Cushman's Ridge 2.0  ,if you will. Also check out Abandonment of Maine's (unaffiliated with this blog) informative piece on the tannery; their Flickr Photostream has lots of neat photos of Riceville's current condition as well.

The company was Hancock Leather Co. which, according to the New England Business Gazetteer and Directory for the year 1854, had offices in Amherst, as well as on 39 Hammond St in Bangor (it had later relocated to 6 State St by 1914). Other maps from the period list "F. Shaw & Bro Bark Extract works" onsite as well.

Shaw operated for some time in the area before Hancock Leather began production in Riceville, as evidenced by documents indicating they got themselves in to trouble by using Sysadobsis stream (between Nicatous and Sysadobsis Lake) to float hemlock to their facility in 1870. As this was against the landowner's wishes it was considered a breach of contract, causing a legal battle(Young vs Clement, 1889). This legal dispute and subsequent fine would later cause Shaw's insolvency. The F Shaw facility's function was to acquire a naturally occurring acid from the hemlock bark called tannin, used in tanning.

Tanning had historically been a process by which the protein structure of an animal skin is altered to be less susceptible to decomposition through treatment with tannin, a naturally occurring acidic compound found in oak trees. The Annual Report of Industrial and Labor Statistics in Maine from 1897 (one year before the Hancock Leather Co tannery opened) describes the tanning process used at the time. This excerpt details the operation of a Shaw tannery in Kingman, of particular interest is the 'acid process'

Up to this point the fiber of the hid is too compact to allow the tanning liquor to "take" as it is called, and if the tanning process were proceeded with in this state the tannin would act only on the otuer surface. The acid process opens up the pores of the hide and "plumps" or gives it a spongy appearance so that it will take the tanning liquor as a sponge takes water. There are two ways in common practice in bringing about this result, one known as the acid process and the other the sour liquor process. In the former case, a strong acid is diluted to the proper consistency to produce the desired result; in the latter, the hides are placed in a liquor which is allowed to sour or form a natural acid which produces the same result on the hide....the hides are now put through a handling process to remove the acid."

Annual Report, Industrial & Labor Statistics

1897

Considering that the "F Shaw & Bro Bark Extract Works" was on the Riceville site prior to Hancock leather Co, it's somewhat safe to assume that the Hancock Leather Co facility at Riceville used traditional tanning methods (tannin acquired from hemlock) as detailed above as opposed to using chromium salts.

So, what was there? Thanks to the annual report for 1907 (the first and last time I must applaud the taxman), I can verify three businesses: Hancock Leather Co, which was responsible for the tannery and all its buildings; Whitcomb, Haynes & Co, whose names appear in several directories as being in the lumber & dry goods businesses (likely the owners of the sites sawmill) as well as John Cassidy & Son, who hold several patents for whisky and rum in the Boston area and are listed as a wholesaler/importer of wine and liquors as early as 1905. In 1900, there was also a school with an attendance of 20 pupils.  There was also Hinkcley & Egerry (sic) Iron Co present as indicated by the Bangor Daily Whig and Courier.

Between them it's known there was a tannery, sawmill, engine and boiler house, outbuildings, boarding house, bark yards, a general store and two farms. Cassidy & Son may have indicated the presence of a bar, and I've heard other rumors of the settlement having a movie house.

What remains of this settlement nowadays? Next to nothing.

In 1880, 10 people lived in Riceville. A decade later at least 136 people lived in the settlement. The next snapshot we get is from 1900 where we see the population diminish to 75. There was nobody there in 1910. It wasn't a slow exodus, driven by economic downturn, that would kill Riceville (far from it, its founders injected $50k of capital into the facility as late as 1902), nor was it the town's brush with smallpox, but rather a disaster that would bring their economic engine to a halt. I must credit a local group of Ghost Hunters for finding an article from the time that appeared in the Bangor Daily Commercial:

The extensive plant at Riceville, consisting of a large tannery, sawmill, engine and boiler house and several outbuildings, owned and operated by the Hancock Leather Co., composed of James Rice, Francis X. and John Rice of Bangor, was entirely destroyed by fire Saturday forenoon, the result of the explosion of a lantern in the roll house. The Riceville plant was an extensive one, consisting of the tannery, roll house, saw mill, engine and boiler house, large bark yards and a general store and boarding house. The two latter were not burned. … The company is now considering the matter of rebuilding the plant but has reached no conclusion as yet. About 25 men were employed at the time of the fire, which gained such headway that with the apparatus at hand nothing could be done to save the buildings.

The roll house was where the final steps of the process occurred. As the name implies it's where leather was compressed using a brass plate and mechanical rollers. From there the story fades from the stark black and white of historical documentation, into the gray of oral history. The story becomes one of outsiders (whether some trader or logger) who had been to the town earlier and returned to find it either abandoned or with bodies strewn about the streets.

Tannery cook - The Bangor Daily News has more photos like this.

 After the accident, the tannery wasn't rebuilt. The prevailing theory at the time is that chemicals from the tanning process contaminated their water table. This is possible, as acids and bases were an integral part of the tanning process, and according to the World Health Organization long term exposure to a base such as ammonia can reduce sensitivity to insulin in small doses. In large doses, adverse effects can be seen in blood pressure and bone mass. Over-exposure to alkaloids during pregnancy can cause cyclopia. Both these substances are detectable in water either by scent or by taste, and it is unlikely that the people of Riceville would have unknowingly poisoned themselves leading to the truth of the 'bodies strewn about' narrative. It's much more likely that a combination of economic concerns and environmental ruination led to the town's demise.

That doesn't mean that there was nothing fishy about the demise of Riceville, as Ryan Prescott of Abandonment of Maine reported:

Despite the media accounts of a lantern explosion, a few people that knew about the settlement were not so sure that the fire was a mistake.  A very reputable source on Riceville claimed that the circumstances of the fire were very confidential due to the insurance company's orders, and he must take great care in what he reveals.  Whether it was an accident or not, he wouldn't say.

AbandonmentOfMaine.com

 In the news...

This site had inspired me to subscribe to Newspapers.com, as they've got extensive archives of the Bangor Daily Whig & Courier...which Google does not. While I cannot link news stories from this site, I provide synopses below: 

• State News - Bangor Daily Whig and Courier - 5/30/1883
• A fire broke out on Township 39 but was contained. 
• Supreme Judicial Court - Bangor Daily Whig and Courier - 06/29/1879
• Someone had stolen from Hinckley & Egerry (sic) Iron Company on Township 39. 
• Local Matters - Bangor Daily Whig and Courier - 02/23/1893
• Township 39 was almost annexed to Penobscot County from Hancock. A petition was circulated against the idea and it never materialized. 
• Coal Beds By The Mile, Waiting to be Mined - Bangor Daily Whig and Courier - 1898
• This story indicates that there is a vein of coal under Township 39 (and Greenfield), a rather substantial one at that. Substantial enough to attract out of state attention. It was never mined because affordable royalty leases could not be acquired. Riceville was almost a coal town.
  

So, what about ghosts? 

It's close enough to Halloween that this stuff can be fun, even though it does tend to make finding historically relevant information somewhat difficult. Personally, I'm of the belief that anything that's real can be objectively measured. I can't purport to know what others feel they've experienced proximate to this ruin. Here are some key bumps in the night provided for your entertainment.

• They were following a narrow path through the woods leading to the Brown Farm site, located in the township’s southwest corner, when the path suddenly vanished from view. (BDN) 
• Three months ago, an ATV rider who is not psychic heard a woman’s voice calling, “Time to come in!” while riding through Riceville. (BDN) 
• “Mostly I picked up on a magnetic field that was self-generating with no apparent easy explanation...Also we picked up on a very slight electrical reading, again with no apparent cause. Nothing to be able to analyze because it was so slight and it didn’t last long enough to get an accurate reading on it.” (BDN)
• This is perhaps the most believable account, the presence of EM fields is not subjective, however the interpretation of the source is. 
• The United States Geological Service shows the coordinates for the Riceville post office as all zeroes.  (Someone better call Mulder & Scully Doctor Walter Bishop.) (GhostTowns)
•  There is a crazy little woman that confronts people with a broken shot gun and a hatchet. (Maine Geocaching)
• Two people that do not sleep walk were drawn out into an area in the woods at different times in the night. (Maine Geocaching.)
• WABI reported an account of a 'mass cemetery' containing 'two or three' bodies. There is a cemetery on site, it's been noted/fenced in. Hardly a 'mass' cemetery.

Joint Surveillance System Radome | Caribou

"Each control site, along with its underground launcher site (the actual location of the Nike missile) will form a defense ring around Loring, protecting it from hostile air attack...each of the four units is capable of firing four missiles simultaneously."

- Maine Nike Guided Missile Installation Moving Ahead

Lewiston Evening Journal

February 22nd, 1957 

In the past I've written about the Nike missile and its nuclear capabilities and have made efforts to share the photos posted over at ColdWarRelics.com of the sites in Connor, Caswell and Limestone.

Sitting atop a hill overlooking Caribou is a radome that is currently part of the long range joint surveillance system used by the Air Force and Federal Aviation Administration. What interests me more is the fact that the site used to be a part of the fire control for Loring's last-ditch nuclear defenses. All that remains is a single radome currently in use by the Air Force/Federal Aviation Administration, formerly the high powered target acquisition radar unit that would have worked in conjunction with anti jamming devices, target tracking and missile tracking radar units. Smaller radomes and antennae would have surrounded this site, each having their own function working toward the goal of intercepting enemy air attacks.

The image above is taken from a fantastic resource - NikeMissile.org. Integrated Fire Control sites came in two flavors, consolidated and unconsolidated depending on the amount of real estate available. As the site is now used by the FAA/USAF, none of the original equipment and buildings remain. However a site exists in California which has been turned into a museum that lets you see it as it would have been. 

Below is a collection of news articles courtesy of Google's News Archive regarding these sites and their control centers:

• 2/27/1957 - New Missile for Maine Defense Sites, Lewiston Evening Journal. 
• 2/22/1958 - Maine Nike Guided Missile Installation Moving Ahead, Lewiston Evening Journal. 
• 5/25/1958 - A- Missile bases Due Across US, Reading Eagle. 

http://nikemissile.org/RCDC.shtml

Queen City Trailer Park | Bangor

Left - 1993. Right - 2004

Stillwater Avenue -- a wondrous topsy-turvy land where signs informing you which lanes are turning lanes are merely suggestions and the retail dreams of our Canadian friends always come true. What is now a thoroughfare where you can buy nearly whatever you want from from part time, variable schedule workers was once the site of 130 single family dwellings. The Queen City Trailer Park inhabited both sides of Stillwater Avenue for three and one half decades from 1965 to 2000. 

When this was a community, most of outer Stillwater was mostly farmland and Wal Mart had yet to do to the Mall what the Mall did to Downtown. According to one resident quoted in the Bangor Daily News in 1999 "people have landscaped, made their lawns look nice. They expected to stay here until they die." So, what happened? 

http://ue-bangor.tripod.com/trailerpark/trailer.html

The death knell for this community didn't sound until 2002. In the late 1990s Judson/Bud M Grant Jr (who also built the Fairmount Hotel, whose single rooms are now apartments) requested rezoning to allow commercial properties and apartment buildings. After which the city used Community Development Block Grant funds to help residents, who were "largely retirees in poor health", go into debt ("acquire financing") for relocation so that the land could be turned from a residential use property to a more profitable commercial use property. Whether voluntarily or forced. The Bangor Explorer's Guild managed to take some photos of the park before it was completely removed.

I know very little else other than that there was the occasional fire and that there was once a motorcycle and a fountain stolen in the 70s. Ricky, Bubbles and Julian these residents  most decidedly were not.

Old Town Lumber | Bennoch Rd, Old Town.

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.

Broadway's Microwave Towers | Bangor

I've seen various images and their associated descriptive text on Picasa and Flickr identifying this local landmark as related to military activity, namely radar. The large, old communications towers overlooking the Broadway Shopping center are actually microwave repeaters that were originally a part of a fledgling long distance (consumer) communications network developed by AT&T as well as Bell labs, who, at the time were responsible for handling ALL long distance communication in the United States. According to a documentary from the late 1970s, each transmitter/receiver could handle up to 3,000 voice calls each, simultaneously. The conical shapes that you see atop the tower are Western Electric KS-15676 horn-reflector antennas originallydesigned in 1955. Bangor appears as a planned phone routing station in the long lines network in maps dated as early as 1966.

More information below. Some technical information as well as a 1977 documentary from AT&T.

Snark Missile Base | Presque Isle

Presque Isle: land of the Oriental Pearl, the Northeastland, and one of the last remaining Shop N' Save locations. Barring tourists who don't bother to look up (or read) when using Exit 186, it's got nearly everything Bangor has including an old nuclear missile base that's since turned into an industrial park. On Skyway drive you'll find an odd collection of long, narrow, hangar type buildings that used to house the the 69 foot Snark intercontinental range missile. The very first offensive weapon in the United States with the capability to deliver an H bomb payload to Russia. Also of note: if the warhead wasn't dropped, the Snark could land itself.

Originally part of Presque Isle Army Airfield that was established in 1941, a squadron of (four) Snark missiles were placed here on alert in February of 1961 and deactivated in June 1961, in service for about four months.After deactivation of the 702nd Missile Wing, the base was reclassified as a national air guard facility. While a premature end to the Snark's operational life and the resulting economic impact to the Presque Isle area may be considered unfortunate, the story nearly had a much more unfortunate ending:

"We had gone to full power for the last sixty seconds before simulated launch. The bird was out on the launch pad. Screaming, I had counted down the last ten seconds over the intercom and pointed at ... the launch switch ...normally, we would retard to idle, let the engine cool down, go to "engine stop," lower the launcher and tow the bird around to the other end of the building where it would be checked over and readied for another run. But not this time...."

-Captain James Berrall, USAF (Retired) 

If you click the attribution above, you can read the full story. While the Air Force told the citizens of Presque Isle that no missiles would be test launched, that didn't mean that they wouldn't be tested at all. During a drill, the engines actually fired while still on the launcher, going at full throttle while attached to the ground and depleting its fuel stores. Poetically described as "reared up on its launcher with its wings spread, thundering away, shaking the ground and the building, proudly telling all the base, the town of Presque Isle and all the surrounding territory for miles around that it was one great big powerful monster lunging at its leash",  Capt. Berrall's account of this faulty missile becomes chilling as he explains that once the missile went from its external stores to its internal ones that, without pressurization to keep the missile body in shape (since the thing wasn't actually flying) that it would have collapsed, potentially spraying its easily combustible fuel everywhere in what could have been quite the toxic fireball.

As this was the first missile we had capable of reaching another continent, it popped up in media quite often:

News articles:

• 12/14/1957 - The Bulletin - makes it very clear that the Snark base in Presque Isle was the very first operational missile base in the US capable of striking Russia.
• 12/14/1957 - The Miami News - mentions the Snark missile in a writeup of political disagreements related to defense appropriation.
• 12/16/1957 - The Beaver Valley Times - runs the byline "Russia will be in range of 5,000-mile missile" Cost is outlined at 12 million dollars, and mentions that the Snark was capable of dropping an H bomb within four miles of its target.
• 12/19/1957 - Spokane Daily Chronicle - touts the 5,000 mile range of the Snark missile and mentions its deployment in Presque Isle. Article also mentions the Air Forces "WS-110" aircraft, which never materialized. (Not hard to figure out why.)
• 04/04/1958 - Lewiston Evening Journal - Article identifies base components while serving notice that construction was open for bids soon. Base to include six assembly buildings, a power/water pumping plant, an engine run-up building, six compressor houses, fuel distribution infrastructure and sewers.
• 05/25/1958 - The Reading Eagle  - reports that the Snark missile base in Presque Isle may have aroused safety concerns from locals, and states that the Snarks were nuclear and not to be fired or test fired unless a war actually were to occur. All crew testing and training occurred in Florida.
• 01/19/1959 - The Milwaukee Journal -  The Snark base at Presque Isle was presented as a complementary force to the Atlas missile program. Article indicates 30 were meant to be stored there. Also of note are plans for development of a 'nuclear powered warplane.'
• 05/20/1959 - Lewiston Daily Sun - Article indicates construction is nearly complete. 
• 09/26/1959 - The Spokesman Review - tells of a failed Snark test flight, but claims that the 'rocket' has been fired over 60 times and is one of the more reliable missiles in the US arsenal. (This article also has a great picture of Khrushchev...)
• 06/09/1960 - Lewiston Evening Journal - An eight man Snark missile crew from Presque Isle successfully tested a 5,000 mile guided missile test in Cape Canaveral, Florida. 
• 12/06/1960 - The Ocala Star - reported the last test flight of a Snark missile, as it was made obsolete by the Atlas. The Presque Isle base is mentioned as the only Snark base once again, and is described as running interference for bombers should war break out.

Webster Mill/Striar Textile | Orono

On a dead end street in the community of Orono, surrounded by upscale beige duplex condominiums is a nice little cul de sac that used to be the site of significant industrial activity. Driving by, you'd never know that it used to be the site of a building that was eligible to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places due to its extensive history dating back to the late 1700s according to some.

The mill building you see above was built in 1892 after the original built in 1875 burned. An article from the Lewiston Evening Journal from late 1895 indicates that the mill was 'new' when an iron bridge was constructed for it. By 1900 it was mentioned in the same paper as being one of the mills immersed in a glut of timber industry activity. (At the time, Bangor was the Pittsburgh of plant cellulose.)

WWII brought the necessity for the mill to begin casting parts for anti aircraft and anti-tank weaponry [citation], and the paper component met its end due to failure to modernize according to this 1972 Bangor Daily story. Shortly thereafter it was purchased by Strair Textile for use as a warehouse for its Ayers Island factory just across the river. Striar Textile operated until 1992, when it file for bankruptcy to the tune of almost 10 million dollars.
It sat abandoned for ten years, out of the news and with the next web footprint being visible in the early 2000's, when the Bangor Explorer's Guild decided to venture inside:

"We found out about this building near the begining of March, 2002, and have so far, only done a little scouting of the outside because we did not have lights at the time. Walley climbed the steel ladder and crouched in the opening, trying to get a look into the back entrance but could only see a large, dark, expansive room; so he hucked a brick across the room, hoping to distinguish the flooring material by the sound of it landing. It sounded like a cement floor, but it was still too dark to investigate any further."

- Bangor Explorer's Guild

You can 'tour' the building, with extensive descriptions and quite a number of interesting photos here.

Apart from being explored by the Bangor Explorers Guild, the next web footprint found was when it was later to be the site of a 200 person rave held in 2003 and was boarded up shortly thereafter.

Cleanup started in 2008, the site was demolished some time between 2011 and 2012 and it now serves as housing for well off suburbanites, despite having been eligible to be included in the National Register of Historic Places.