Going for a Walk or Two!

            Getting from one place to another in and around early Millinocket and the surrounding area usually meant walking! Excerpts from early 1900 letters help tell that story. 

            One letter (prior to October, 1903, from a man in Millinocket to his grandmother contains the following. “Sunday walked down to North Twin and Norcross – the only way to get there is by the single track railroad. The scenery does not amount to much going but there is an interesting dam half finished at North Twin which the G. N. P. Co. is building. Got down there in time to be invited to dinner at the contractor’s camp. Beef stew, boiled potatoes, evaporated apple pie, tea and bread and butter everything very good except the butter which was rank. At Norcross there are half a dozen houses round the railroad station, a little fancy log cabin hotel in which we found all the young men of the village playing poker (there were five or six sitting round). There are two ways of getting to Norcross, one by railroad and also by the lake there being two small steam boats that go somewhere and they are building another little boat there. In one place on the way back (walking) we found a good many fresh deer tracks and although we crept around we could not see any deer.”

            Another letter written by the same man in late October, 1903 states, “Yesterday I walked down to Medway where the East Branch and West Branch of the Penobscot River join, crossed the river in a canoe, there being no bridge, had dinner at a funny hotel and walked back, making little side trips into the woods looking for game as I carried a rifle. I did get one partridge but saw several more and a red fox but did not shoot at the latter although I had a pretty good chance while he stopped in the road to look at me. Medway is the nearest real town ten miles from here (letter written in Millinocket at the GN Hotel). The next one to that is Mattawamkeag twelve miles further. Although I had a compass and the sun was shining bright I felt pretty queer after going into the woods even a short distance and came out again pretty quick. The woods all about here are a maze of old logging roads and many of them go a little ways and stop.” This second letter suggests he wandered around a bit and then walked back to within about a mile of Millinocket where the Episcopal preacher picked him up. He appreciated the ride and that night attended the service that night at the preacher’s mission church.