Avon, Phillips, Madrid
The road north of Farmington to Rangeley, Maine is a favorite drive of mine. In August, the wife and I bundled up the baby, shelved our Blackberries (mine is a really cool silver color called Lunar Glow), and jumped off the hectic 24/7 whirlygig of modern life here in Hollywood to go camping in Rangeley for a weekend. (Full disclosure: I am lying. My sister and brother and their families camped; we stayed at the Rangeley Inn and joined them for 'smores.)
North of Farmington on Route 4 one follows the Sandy River, a wide stream full of boulders that weaves back and forth under the road. The forest is lush here in the summer, everything is overgrown, and one focuses on the deep green of the trees. There is not a lot going on here any longer. Rangeley is a hopping town, a "four season tourist town" with spectacular fall foliage, a ski resort and camping and watersports in the summer. (What do they do in the spring? Mud sightseeing? Mud snowmobiling? No idea. )
But driving out of Farmington, through Avon, Phillips and Madrid, this time, I was struck by the number of empty houses. The area is very slowly losing its population. There is little forest products industry anymore, once the dominant source of jobs in northern Maine. In Phillips a large logyard and sawmill sits at a fork in the road. Now the yard is empty and the mill is quiet. That's new from the last time I was there.
A few years ago the town of Madrid was "de-organized," a term of art describing the dissolution of an incorporated Maine town. The townspeople vote to dissolve their town and throw their municipal functions back onto a state agency with the acronym LURC, which is pronounced, ominously, "lurk." It's a little sad driving through this crossroads now. The sign is still there on Route 4 though: "Welcome to Madrid, 1807." (Madrid is pronounced with the accent on the first syllable here.)
(A description of Madrid from 1886 is here, including a mention of Smalls Falls, one of the reasons this drive is one of my favorites. The town then had 437 residents.)
There's nothing but trees here now; why in God's name would anyone have moved to this inaccessible wilderness in 1807? What did they think would be here in 200 years? Would they be disappointed, or were they headed up here to escape the law or a landlord or the colonial equivalent of the Blackberry?
Today there is basically only one way to get to Avon, Phillips and Madrid, and that is to drive for three hours from Portland (or fly in to the airfield in Phillips, I guess). 200 years ago the only way was over rutted and rocky wagon trails, by horse or by foot. Starting in the 1870s, a series of small railroads sprang up to serve these towns. (The founding of so many tiny railroad systems in Maine seems pretty mind-boggling, considering that, in my lifetime, it took decades for consumers and government to restore passenger rail service from Boston to Portland.)
Tall hills on either side of the Sandy River dictated that roads and railbeds follow the river valley, and the paved roads today trace those early routes. It's easier to get to, but not much easier, and there's not a lot more there.
Sometimes civilization doesn't follow a straight line. People go to one place, and it grows. People go to another, and that one doesn't grow, and they move on. The houses fall in on themselves. Eventually even the cellarholes disappear. 173 people live in Madrid now.
North of Farmington on Route 4 one follows the Sandy River, a wide stream full of boulders that weaves back and forth under the road. The forest is lush here in the summer, everything is overgrown, and one focuses on the deep green of the trees. There is not a lot going on here any longer. Rangeley is a hopping town, a "four season tourist town" with spectacular fall foliage, a ski resort and camping and watersports in the summer. (What do they do in the spring? Mud sightseeing? Mud snowmobiling? No idea. )
But driving out of Farmington, through Avon, Phillips and Madrid, this time, I was struck by the number of empty houses. The area is very slowly losing its population. There is little forest products industry anymore, once the dominant source of jobs in northern Maine. In Phillips a large logyard and sawmill sits at a fork in the road. Now the yard is empty and the mill is quiet. That's new from the last time I was there.
A few years ago the town of Madrid was "de-organized," a term of art describing the dissolution of an incorporated Maine town. The townspeople vote to dissolve their town and throw their municipal functions back onto a state agency with the acronym LURC, which is pronounced, ominously, "lurk." It's a little sad driving through this crossroads now. The sign is still there on Route 4 though: "Welcome to Madrid, 1807." (Madrid is pronounced with the accent on the first syllable here.)
(A description of Madrid from 1886 is here, including a mention of Smalls Falls, one of the reasons this drive is one of my favorites. The town then had 437 residents.)
There's nothing but trees here now; why in God's name would anyone have moved to this inaccessible wilderness in 1807? What did they think would be here in 200 years? Would they be disappointed, or were they headed up here to escape the law or a landlord or the colonial equivalent of the Blackberry?
Today there is basically only one way to get to Avon, Phillips and Madrid, and that is to drive for three hours from Portland (or fly in to the airfield in Phillips, I guess). 200 years ago the only way was over rutted and rocky wagon trails, by horse or by foot. Starting in the 1870s, a series of small railroads sprang up to serve these towns. (The founding of so many tiny railroad systems in Maine seems pretty mind-boggling, considering that, in my lifetime, it took decades for consumers and government to restore passenger rail service from Boston to Portland.)
Tall hills on either side of the Sandy River dictated that roads and railbeds follow the river valley, and the paved roads today trace those early routes. It's easier to get to, but not much easier, and there's not a lot more there.
Sometimes civilization doesn't follow a straight line. People go to one place, and it grows. People go to another, and that one doesn't grow, and they move on. The houses fall in on themselves. Eventually even the cellarholes disappear. 173 people live in Madrid now.
posted by Hallovian at 7:04 AM
4 Comments:
And yet, the population of Maine is growing, no? I'll bet you a mud snowmobile trip that those remote towns will become in 20 years what the Catskills have become to NYC residents -- quaintified outposts where apartment dwellers can buy falling-down cottages and enact their House Beautiful fantasies on them. The coffee shops, galleries and bookstores will follow. And it will be better for these towns than dying slow deaths. Right?
and then push for a fancified grocery store, a gas station every mile and a half, and people from away horning in on every town meeting and calling the cops every time you bust a couple caps on your own property. I don't mind a good bookstore and a brewpub though.
Spring = Fishing Otherwise, you've stirred up many pleasant memories for me. But, let us not go there, I hear mom reads your blog on occasion.
Sad to think, though, that people who had real jobs in these self-sustained centers bought goods and services locally, grew their own food, shared rides, rinsed out their bread bags to reuse, didn't have 30 pairs of shoes, didn't buy their kids a roomful of toys for Christmas..and they didn't consider themselves poor. So the kids move away after high school and don't come back. This area won't be 'discovered' by people from away any time soon.
Post a Comment
<< Home