Early Town Water System

                       Odds and Ends From The MUSEUM!

By Trudy Wyman, Curator, Millinocket Historical  Society Museum

            Since Katahdin Avenue, Penobscot Avenue and Central Street (downtown area) were the first active streets, it is understandable that those were the first areas to receive water, sewer and light services. These streets formed a triangle. Sewers were also added to Pine, Spruce and Poplar Streets, cross streets.

            Millinocket Water Company was incorporated in 1899 under Maine law. A Massachusetts company, Moore and Gowan, were responsible for installation of the water and sewer systems. They used Italian labor as directed by GNP. The new water company was headed by John Moore who led the installation of a gravity water system with Ferguson Pond as the source. This system would provide water to the three named streets and others that followed. There was also an auxiliary line from the mill fire pump to the town line near the beginning of Katahdin Avenue, near the mill gate.

            In 1906, the water company built a filter house back of the mill, near the canal. This addition of a filter house and two sand beds made for a larger water system. This was in the area where early religious services had ben held in a nice pie grove.

            The water pressure varied a lot in different areas of town as the town grew. Some streets had a lot of water pressure while others received very little. If a mill pump was added to the system, more water pressure could be added to the system in case of a fire.

            As the town’s population grew, the Millinocket Water Company added more filters (1930) and in 1931, a 15-pound Wallace & Tiernan Chlorinator was connected to the mill’s fire pump so that all water passing into the system would be chlorinated. I 1932, a standpipe (440,000 gallons) was constructed near the filter house. This allowed a more even water pressure in the different areas of town and helped the MFD to fight fires without assistance from the GNP mill fire pump.

            As in the beginning and in areas of town where no town water had been installed, some people depended on hand-dug wells for their drinking water and for other needs. Often those wells were dug in house cellars and Laverty states that some wells could still be found in the cellars of older homes in town (early 1970’s).   The Laverty book mentions a Big Jack MacDonald who peddled drinking water door-to-door from the mill water supply.

            Over the years, as the town’s population grew and more areas were opened up to housing, the water and sewer systems grew and expanded also. Those systems belonged to the town, but as before, when help was needed, GNP provided it. By the mid-1950’s, with the opening of the area known as the New Development (people still call it by that name), 369 new house lots were added. The Millinocket Water company installed a new booster pump and a 200,000 gallon water tank for the new housing.

(Photo shows an early mill water tower.)