During its tenure, the GNP Millinocket mill had quite a few different paper machines. Sometimes, after years of use and the changing needs of the paper industry, a paper machine would be replaced. This began mid 1920’s (McCann reference) when the Canadian paper industry was producing more paper than the United States. Great Northern reduced its per ton paper price and decided to start replacing its almost 30-year-old paper machines.               The May 1926 issue of The Nor

In Millinocket’s early days, businesses, doctors & lawyers offices and other establishments located in the downtown area did not have a street address, but were referred to by “block” location. There was the Decker Block, the Moore Block, the Hayden Block, the Rush Block, the Whalen Block and more. All advertisements in the local and Bangor newspapers used a block name. As time passed and new businesses took over a location, some names changed (Decker Block became known as De

Signs! Signs! Signs! Since the museum was organized in 1979, it has accepted donations of local signs…businesses, organizations, medical and more. A new exhibit at the Historical Society shows off a few from the collection. One of the oldest is a wooden Katahdin Avenue sign recovered in the 1980’s during a porch renovation. Another, with an interesting story, has one word MUSEUM, on it. This sign was created by Merrill Segee, one of the founders of MHS.  He found the piece o

The onset of World War 2 brought about changes in the way Great Northern Paper Company produced paper. John E. McLeod describes some of the changes in his history The Northern, The Way I Remember . McLeod states that even before Pearl Harbor, war controls were in effect in the US & Canada. Most of these government agencies went by letters…example – OPM for Office of Production Management. By 1942, these agencies made it difficult for GNP to get needed materials for repairs,

In January of 1951, Owen Osborne, sports writer for the Bangor Daily News, wrote an article about new features being added by the Katahdin Outing Club to the ski & recreation area on Black Cat Mountain outside of Millinocket.  Osborne predicted that this ski area, with views of Mt. Katahdin would become one of the leading recreation areas in the state of Maine! A new 1200 foot Underwood ski tow (almost in the shadow of Mt. Katahdin and bordering Millinocket Lake) had recentl

In the old logging days of GNP, work horses played a major role. In John E. McLeod’s The Northern, he describes the importance of these horses and the work they did. In the beginning of GNP, horses hauled supplies to the log camps in winter on sleds from Greenville to the head of Moosehead Lake (40 miles) on iced-over trails marked by brush stuck in the snow. They all traveled the same marked path, following one another to build up a hard-packed surface. There might have been