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"To do is to be" - Spinoza "To be is to do" - Neitzche "Do be do be do" - Frank Sinatra
Clarks Coveby Tom MyersKinesis’s home, Clarks Cove, has a long and interesting maritime history, from the Wawenock Indians down to the present day.  These pictures are form the time of the American Ice Company. Where the students stay was a boarding house for the ice-workers. The American Ice Co. preceded the Bristol Ice Company, which went under in the 30's.  Ice was cut in the pond and moved by endless chain link conveyors on an elevated slipway from the pond, up over the road, and down across the field to three ice houses. The pads for these ice houses can be seen especially well in the spring, when the grass lies flat. They were east of Mudfog, 100-150 yards or so. The long axes were perpendicular to the shore, angled slightly toward Mudfog.   There were three of them, with a shallow ditch around each one; they're fairly close together. I've never measured the footprint, but according to Ervine Hatch, who was a boy here around World War I, they each held 18,000 tons of ice (so, 54,000 tons in all). There was a sluiceway that connected each of the ice houses to the wharf, the remains of the base of which are still on the eastern shore of the cove. The end pilings still stuck out of the water in 1953 and could be seen underwater until the 90's.  Remains of the conveyor chain stick out of the mud in the corner of the pond where we used to get our skates on. There is a ravine there that goes up to the road (which wasn't there in ice company time), the rest of which is on the other side of the road on Brunner land.  Photos show that the ice was sent on the sluice from each ice house, and the wharf end part of the sluice was adjustable for ship height and tide. There used to be part of a steam boiler at the lower end of Brunner’s field, over near where the ice houses were, which powered the conveyor. At the time, the road ran in front of the farmhouse.  Schooners (3 and 4-masters) lay off in the deep part of the river until the tide was suitable to come into the wharf and load.   The building at the outer end of the wharf was a barn about the size and shape as my current one. This building was moved off the wharf, down on to the ice, and across the river, and up the slope on the Edgecomb side a hundred feet vertically to where the River Road now goes -- the barn is still there, on the far side of the road -- by Ervine and his father Evander (Vanny) in December of 1915. It took them a month, and they were paid $50 (which they took in lieu of the alternative offer, Miller and Carlisle Islands). They used the capstan which used to sit between the blacksmith shop and the 5-car garage – still here. There was a Kelsey ice house between the barn and my current house, for the personal use of the Kelseys -- like all ice houses, it melted into the ground when it was no longer used. According to Thurlow Kelsey, it was almost as big as my barn.   An earlier history was the creation of the pond for the mining of blue clay for bricks -- part of the Damariscotta River brickyards. The dam was built for increasing the pond level for logging. Bully Luke (foreman of the Goudy and Stevens shipyard years ago; brother of Paul Luke) remembered riding logs through this dam, under the bridge (just below where the road goes now) out into the cove. This would have been before WWI. .jpg) The American Ice Co came after the brick business (therefore after Boston's Back Bay -- recipient of much of the Damariscotta River's brick); was coincident with logging operations; and what I've narrated above. I think the change to Bristol Ice Co came around WW I. Bristol Ice foundered as part of the economic collapse following 1929.   Below is an article about the ice business in Maine - is there anywhere where politics is left behind? Ice-outfrom The Bangor Daily NewsMonday, April 3, 2006 by Wayne Reilly The betting began in late March a century ago. Maine's annual ice-out lottery was underway. "When's the ice goin' out? This is a question that every fourth man asks every fifth man one meets on the street nowadays," noted the Bangor Daily Commercial on March 28, 1906. "Considerable money is staked in wagers on the date of the ice leaving the river and it furnishes a chance for gambling that is indulged in by people who would never stake a dollar otherwise." The gambling followed the ice harvest, which was a game of chance as well. Besides the weather, the variables included the amount if ice formed on the Hudson River, Maine rivers' main competition, and the amount of artificial ice manufactured by big companies in faraway cities. The decisions of the American Ice Company, the trust that controlled most of the harvest in Maine, also counted a great deal. The ice business in 1906 was better than the year before, but there was still a lot of nostalgic yearning for the good old days. The big year was 1890, when approximately 400,000 tons was cut, and everybody who had the money to get an ice house or a wharf room to stack ice went into the business. Men made small fortunes, recalled the newspapers. That year the American Ice Company cut and stored only about 60,000 tons along the Penobscot in the American, Arctic, Orrington and Stetson ice houses. Small local companies such as Getchell Bros. and Citizens Ice Company stored another 30,000 in other ice houses such as Rollins, Dirigo and Union. Hundreds of men, especially farmers who could supply a team of horses, had made good wages cutting on the Penobscot and up the Kenduskeag Stream. Some of the ice stayed in Bangor. The biggest user was S. A. Maxfield Co. on Valley Avenue, which required 700 tons a season for its slaughterhouse, according to the Commercial. Thousands of householders bought it for their ice boxes, and shopkeepers needed it to preserve produce. But most of it, indeed all of what the American Ice Company cut, was sold in New York City and other big cities. The year before, only 24,000 tons had been harvested, but that was better than in 1901, when the syndicate cut no ice in Maine. The ice industry was clearly dying. In August 1906, the Rollins ice house would burn and most of the 10,000 tons of ice it contained would melt in the blazing sun. By 1919, when his book on the history of Maine appeared, Louis C. Hatch said there were no ice houses left on the Penobscot River and those left on the Kennebec sat empty. But things seemed to be in full swing in the winter of 1905-1906. Reports indicated there might be an "ice famine" in New York City because of mild conditions on the Hudson, if plenty of ice wasn't harvested in Maine. An ice famine meant hardship for the poor for whom ice was still a luxury. The price of meat, milk and other produce in stores would go up as shopkeepers tried to recoup their losses. Yet the hated American Ice Company always made its profit by raising the price as high as need be. The Bangor Daily News took after the ice trust in scathing editorials on Feb. 9 and March 30. "Right here in our midst is an exhibition of where many thousands of dollars have been removed from the reach of the Maine working man and turned over to a monopoly, which is pillaging the pockets of the poor consumers until ice has become a luxury." A wire story out of Gardiner on April 16 complained the American Ice Company had curtailed the harvest on the Kennebec, where most Maine ice was cut, in order to drive up prices in the big cities. "The American Ice Company came in control of the business on this river in 1900 and in the six years has not harvested at any one year one-half the amount that was annually put up by private or independent concerns prior to the year 1900," said the BDN story. And so the debate would thunder on a few more years until the ice business passed into oblivion, the victim of manufactured ice, mechanical home refrigerators and pollution. In 1906, harvesting had to be shut down temporarily on two ice fields in the Penobscot River off Bangor because of blowing cinders from the railroad yards and sawdust from the sawmills, just two of the problems infecting the river water. Bangor didn't spend too much time licking its wounds over the dwindling ice harvest. Even before the ice was out of the river, the newspapers started speculating on the arrival of the spring coasting trade. Prospects did not appear bright. One big anticipated loss was traffic to and from northern Maine. Large amounts of lumber and coal would be diverted around the city to new wharves at Stockton Harbor and Searsport on the Bangor and Aroostook's new spur, the Northern Seaport Railroad. The betting ended on Thursday, April 5, when the ice broke up in the river. The feisty little Bon Ton ferry dodged floes on its first runs between Bangor and Brewer. On Sunday, two schooners towed by tugs arrived with loads of coal and fertilizer. The first Boston passenger steamer, the rugged Penobscot, slowed by running ice, came up Monday morning. The steamer Tremont on its Brooksville-Stockton Springs run arrived later that day, as did a coal schooner. More good news was announced in the Commercial on April 13. Seven area saw mills, from Sterns Lumber in East Hampden to James Walker & Company at Basin Mills, were "beginning to clear for action." Even before the arrival of the first river drivers with new logs, the mills would soon be sawing lumber from logs frozen in millponds or hauled up on the shore all winter. The big saws would be whining and groaning and spewing sawdust up and down the waterfront. Men would be working. This was just the beginning. The old river wasn't dead yet. Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net. |
Clarks Cove |
