Maine Memory Network

The Arcade was built in 1926 along Route 1 in East Machias and was owned by R.K. Dennison of East Machias.

This popular destination attracted locals and tourists alike. It had a theater and an ice cream parlor and dining room.

One September night, someone put a cigarette butt in the waste container, and the Arcade burned down.

R. K. Dennison of East Machias built the Arcade in 1926 along Route 1 in East Machias. It was a popular destination for locals and tourists alike.

It had a theater with 500 seats; the movie “Knockout Reilly” with Richard Dix was being shown when this photo was taken in 1927.

It also had an ice cream parlor and dining room.

Across the road was a boarding house, and three overnight cabins were available for travelers. Rooms rented for $1 a night. Gasoline and oil were also available.

The Arcade burned in a fire.

This photo shows a small section of Cony Park in the mid 1930s. The park was between Broad Cove and Deep Cove at the entrance to Shackford Head. Note the 3-masted schooner in the background behind the swing set, and further back, the bow and gunwhale of a half-submerged wreck. The area occupied by the park was once known as the Cony farm.

A descendent donated the land to the City of Eastport in the 1920s for a park. In the early 1930s the city had Works Progress Administration crews build the park, which consisted of tennis courts, a baseball diamond, swings, camping areas, and fireplaces.

During World War II the park was taken over by the U.S. Navy, which by 1944 had constructed a seaplane ramp on the Deep Cove side. After the war the land was returned to the city, which used it as a dump until the late 1970s, when the state ordered it closed.

In the early 1990s the state opened Shackford Head State Park next to the former dump site. The state leased a small portion of land from Eastport for an entrance from the Deep Cove Road, where the Civil War Ships Memorial-Monument and parking lot are.

Located on Water Street in Eastport, the building was constructed in 1897 as a club house for businessmen called the Riverside. It contained 20 sleeping rooms with a dining hall that could seat 35.

In 1908 C. L. Cothell turned it into a hotel, added two balconies to the front, and renamed it the Riverside Hotel.

The hotel was in a desirable business location during the late 1800s and early decades of the 20th century. The Eastern Steamship wharf, sardine factories, and railroad tracks connecting with the Washington County Railroad, later the Maine Central, were nearby.

Behind the hotel were Sea Street and a building that housed the main office of the Seacoast Canning Co., which was connected to the hotel by a covered walkway. The building to the right of the hotel housed the company’s machine shop and mustard mill. The building to the left was the Lambert House, at one time a rooming house and apartment building.

The Riverside Hotel was renamed the Hotel East and retained this name until it was torn down in the 1970s or early 1980s. The Lambert House is also gone.

The excellent water quality of Grand Lake has made it a prime location for hatching land-locked salmon for generations. Before the state established fish hatcheries, some private fishing clubs propagated their own fish.

Among these were the Dobsis Club between Dobsis Lake and Grand Lake, the Commodore Club at Hartland, Parmacheene Club, and the Megantic Club. They stripped, hatched, fed and distributed fry in public waters without expense to the state.

In 1868 the Maine and Massachusetts Commissioners of Fisheries began collecting eggs and hatching them in a spring at Grand Lake Stream. In 1871 they built the first hatchery building, a log structure, over a spring in Billy Brown Brook.

Later the hatchery was located along the stream near the mouth of Billy Brown Brook. A report from 1877 states that 2,159,000 eggs were reported to have been obtained, with 470,000 hatched for Grand Lake and the rest shipped out that year.

In 1878 the hatchery was torn down. Its next location was in "the Cove" (Forbes Cove) near the dam. It then relocated to its present site along the stream at the center of town.

From 1888-1892 Charles G. Atkins was superintendent of the Craig Brook Station and Schoodic Station at Grand Lake Stream. The buildings evolved and changed over time.

This view shows the state fish hatchery in the 1920s. Today Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife continues to operate a major hatchery on the site.

The white building behind the hatchery is the store once owned by Bob Sutherland, an early merchant in Grand Lake Stream.

In 1860, Mathew Clare purchased a large double house on Court Street beside the County Jail. He soon remodeled the building into Clare’s Hotel.

Clare advertised, "No pains will be spared, on the parts of himself or wife to make their patrons comfortable, well fed and provided with good rooms and clean beds." Clare’s Hotel, along with the nearby Eastern Hotel, especially catered to business travelers and people attending court.

Mathew Clare and his wife, Catherine, were immigrants from Ireland. For ten years before opening his hotel on Court Street, Clare had operated a hotel and livery stable on Water Street. He also ran a daily stage between Machias and Lubec, which connected with the ferry between Lubec and Eastport.

In 1881, Mathew Clare died from injuries sustained in a carriage accident. The Machias Union noted, "From his long connection with hotel life he had large acquaintance."

After his death, his wife and descendants continued to operate the hotel until about 1920 when Bertram White purchased the building, tore down the front, and used the property for a garage.

In 1938, the property was purchased by the County of Washington, which tore down the remaining buildings for use as a parking lot.

Sometime after the turn of the last century, Charlie Stone built a resort on the west shore of Meddybemps Lake. It catered to "sports" from away who were attracted to the lake’s good fishing and hunting.

Camp Meddybemps consisted of a large central lodge and several small guest cabins. The lodge had a dining room, office area, sitting room, large central fireplace made of local stones, and a large veranda with sweeping views.

Local residents were employed as guides, most being paid to row their clients around the lake while they fished, for about a dollar a day. Outboard motors, affectionately known as "kickers," were rare at the time and were noisy, smelly and temperamental, so rowing was the method of choice for almost all sporting traffic.

Although the facilities were rustic, in the 1920s the lodge had a telephone and electricity, visible in the wiring and bulbs in the photo. Lewis Campbell installed the telephone, running a wire from the village along the shore and underwater over a mile to the camp.

The lodge burned in the 1930s, and only some of the stone piers and remnants of the fireplace remain, covered in brush and weeds. Two or three of the cabins continued to be used as of 2013 as rustic summer camps.

In 1907 and only two years from the time Woodland was a forested, largely uninhabited wilderness, Charles Murray, an immigrant from Italy, built the Woodland Opera House to provide the then boom town a venue for entertainment.

The St. Croix Paper Mill was built by immigrant Italians, and they loved opera. Murray’s Hall, which became known as the Opera House, was dedicated on December 31, 1907. A special train from Calais took guests to the Grand Ball.

Murray made his countryman, Michael Foggia, its manager and for over half a century the Opera House was the social center of the town. Located just outside the mill gate, it featured vaudeville, plays, dancing, and even prize fights in the early years.

By the roaring 20s moving pictures were the central attraction and, in the 1930s, bowling alleys were added. It hosted high school graduations and school plays in the days Woodland’s school had no gym.

Mike Foggia, who soon bought the building, opened a store on the first floor, which became known for its fresh Italian bread.

The business closed in the late 1950s, and the building was razed. The site became a parking area for the mill.

Indian Lake is a small lake along Route 1 between Whiting and East Machias. From 1922 into the 1940s, the Indian Lake Inn was a destination for locals and travelers alike.

It had a dance hall, restaurant, gas pumps, and a small boat landing. About 1930, as automobile touring was growing popular, a few overnight cabins, just visible at the right, were added.

The inn was partially destroyed by fire in the 1940s. The large part of the building was not rebuilt, but the smaller section was salvaged and continued to house a restaurant and dance hall for a few years.

In 1901 Mr. and Mrs. Frank Ball of Andover, Massachusetts, purchased the "White House," a former boarding house for tannery workers and fishermen, and established one of the first sporting camps in Grand Lake Stream.

Under Stephen Yates’ ownership, prior to and after the tannery went bankrupt in 1898, the White House catered to sportsmen.

Ball turned the place into a sporting destination. He added cottages, two of which are the Twin Sisters shown in the photo, marketed it effectively, and made it easy for guests to get to. Sportsmen could take the Washington Country Railroad to Princeton, then board a stage or a launch up Big Lake to Gould’s landing, where Ball sent a buckboard to meet them. Later, brochures advertised that Balls Camps’ autos would meet them at the train station.

The abundance of landlocked salmon and, later, smallmouth bass, the availability of excellent guides, and the ease of access to Grand Lake Stream spurred the development of many other sporting camps: Yates Camps (Indian Rock Camps), Grand Lake Camps, Will Rose’s Camps or Ouananiche Lodge, Grand Lake Lodge, Chet’s Camps. and others.

Many still operate.

In 1922 Rutherford Weatherby and Herb Chisholm purchased Balls Camps, and the business continued as Weatherby’s Maine Fishing and Hunting Lodge. The Twin Sisters still stood facing Canal Street in 2013.

The Harrington House offered rooms for overnight accommodation and had a restaurant that featured "blue plate dinners."

A 1920-era photo identifies the building as Silas Gibson’s residence. Presumably he built the two front additions when he went into the hospitality business.

The building still stood in 2013 with the exception of the glassed-in dining room area on the right and office area on the left.

One of the early sales at Rogue Bluffs in Machias of developers John Chandler and Gilbert Longfellow was in 1887 to George W. Drisko, editor of The Machias Union. Drisko never built a house and sold the lot in 1894 to Ernest Crane, a Machias store owner, who immediately built a cottage.

Crane spent extended periods of time at his cottage in the winter months, giving as a reason that he was too busy at his store in the summer. The "Crane’s Nest," because of its location, shows up in many early photographs. Most show an ell and stable, which was built in 1895. The "Annex" was added in 1918 and thought to have been a ship’s cabin.

The cottage is now gone.

Camp Meddybemps had several cabins for its guests, who came to fish in Lake Meddybemps and hunt. Guides were available to help them make the most of their sporting holiday.

They could enjoy the view from the porches of these cabins.

Many of the camp buildings are now gone, but two or three of the cabins are still used as summer camps.

This image shows the lodge at Camp Meddybemps, which housed the dining room, office, and sitting room. It burned in the 1930s.

Camp Meddybemps had several cabins for its guests, who came to fish in Lake Meddybemps and hunt. Guides were available to help them make the most of their sporting holiday. They could enjoy the view from the porches of these cabins.

Many of the camp buildings are gone, but two or three of the cabins were still used as summer camps as of 2013.

The Willows was an old home adjacent to the Wharf Road in Steuben. Built in 1785 by Dr. Ebenezer Handy, it was considered the oldest home in Steuben. Early owners of the home were Alonzo and Ellen (Moore) Smith.

The model T in the photograph looks new, and the style of dress suggests that it was taken near the time when this automobile model was first produced (1909). The driver is Arthur Morris; in the front seat is Maurice Whitten and in the back seat, Ruth, Marion, and Norma Davis and Janet Kelley, who was 2 years old.

The house fell into disrepair and was destroyed in a controlled burn by the newly formed Steuben Fire Department at the Steuben Town Picnic and Fourth of July celebration in 1971.

This Queen Anne style house was built about 1880 for Henry H. Bowles by noted Cherryfield architect and builder Charles Allen.

It stood out among Cherryfield’s many fine Federal and Greek Revival homes. Bowles was a storekeeper with a large building at the Lower Corner, occupied by a law office, tinsmith, and other businesses.

In the 1920s, when this photograph was taken, it was the Narraguagus Inn, one of three Cherryfield businesses that bore that name at one time or another. It was one of several boarding houses in town, which housed mill employees, travelers, and students at Cherryfield Academy.

This inn later became the Salmon Lodge, which catered to a clientele of recreational salmon fishermen when the Narraguagus River teemed with salmon. The building burned in 1962. By the 1970s the salmon were gone.

John Brewer, a prominent Robbinston shipbuilder and brigadier general of the Washington County Militia during the War of 1812, built the elegant Federal style Mansion House in 1785.

From the glass-enclosed cupola were sweeping views of the St. Croix River and bay.

It is one of three grand Brewer homes in Robbinston: the striking Greek Revival house built by John’s son, Capt. John Nehemiah Marks Brewer; and the Gothic Revival house, called the Cottage House, built by John N. M. Brewer’s widow, Henrietta.

James Shepherd Pike, a Calais native who was Abraham Lincoln’s ambassador to the Netherlands, owned the Mansion House after Brewer. Pike is said to have set the granite milestones, still visible in 2013, along the road between his home and Calais to clock his horses as he traveled to his law office in Calais.

He entertained such noted guests as Horace Greeley, Charles A. Dana, and Justice Salmon P. Chase, who shared his abolitionist views, at the Mansion House.

Robbinston was allegedly the last stop on the Underground Railroad, from which fugitive slaves crossed into Canada.

The Jacksonville Methodist Campground is north of East Machias, off Route 191. There are two circles of cottages. The outside circle has 17 cottages and the inner circle has 10 cottages. The Tabernacle, in front of the outer circle, was built in 1865, and Rev. Frank Williamson was the first minister.

People from Cutler, Columbia Falls, Lubec, Calais and Pembroke built cottages to stay in for the annual two-week camp meeting.

A large, long building, which could seat 144 people, was used for meals as well as meetings and sleeping. At one time the camp meeting began and ended with a turkey dinner.

The Jacksonville Methodist Campground was still active in 2013.

The Atlantic House in Milbridge was a public rooming house for travelers. The door to the far right led to a bar that was open to the public.

Annie Smart owned the building at one time. Then George and Eleanor Bloch were its proprietors. Finally, Richard and Mary Haskins were its owners before it became a nursing home.

The building was demolished in 1976, and the Narraguagus Bay Health Care facility occupied the lot in 2013.

The small building between the Atlantic House and Dinsmore’s Store was at one time a barbershop and finally a harness shop.