Bangoreans already had a canoe club, a bicycle club and a horse club a century ago. The rise of the gasoline-powered motorboat gave them yet another reason to found a club devoted to locomotion. The …
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A century ago criminals were starting to make their getaways in automobiles, while law officers were still depending on horses and shoe leather for transportation. This technology gap resulted in some comical confrontations worthy of the Keystone Kops Hall of Fame.
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SWIFT TWIN TURBINERS FOR FAMOUS OLD BOSTON-BANGOR LINE, announced a large headline in the Bangor Daily News on June 14, 1909. “Camden and Belfast, Handsome Sister Ships of Steel, Succeed The Wooden …
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EVIDENCE OF PROSPERITY IN BIG BUILDING BOOM, announced a large headline in the Bangor Daily Commercial on June 10, 1909, a century ago this week. Real estate was changing hands. The construction …
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The Bangor waterfront at night was a dark maze a century ago. Along the Penobscot River and up the Kenduskeag Stream were unlit alleyways leading from the main thoroughfares to wharves that abruptly …
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King Cotton reigned in Bangor ever so briefly a century ago this week. As their lumbering economy declined, Bangoreans were looking for new places to invest. For a short time, a proposal to build a …
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Sentinels were back on watch outside of Bangor saloons a century ago this week. Rusty bolts in barroom doors had been oiled. “[T]he symphony of the crowbar and the axe will again be heard,” …
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If you got blind, roaring drunk in Bangor once upon a time, you were apt to end up in the county jail for a month or two. Conditions there were about the same as in the average Maine barn. Unlike a …
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Bangor residents valued their mass transportation system in a way that we can only imagine in the era of the automobile. Steam-powered trains left the Queen City at all hours of the day and night to …
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If you were down and out in Bangor a century ago, you might get a visit from Mrs. Jennie Johnson, city missionary. She would want to check to see if you were one of the deserving poor — too sick …
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