Millinocket: A Testament to American Manufacturing

Millinocket, Maine has a story similar to the tale of most manufacturing towns. It is a story that begins with a rapidly flowing river. Water power is harnessed and its natural might generates energy. Factories spring up and use the river’s energy to manufacture consumer goods. Next, investors notice the factory’s potential and support the company that owns the mill. Production soon expands and more workers are needed to meet demand. The lure of steady jobs brings workers and families to the region. A school is built, then a church, then a main street district with a movie theater and a department store. Almost overnight, an outpost in the boonies becomes a town.

Great Northern Paper's Millinocket mill.

Millinocket fits this truly American story. The twentieth century saw a rise in manufacturing in the United States like the world had never seen. Families prospered and made a decent living by putting in long hours at the mills. Sons followed in the footsteps of their fathers and grandfathers, taking jobs at the local factory as soon as they were old enough. Despite this prosperous trend, American manufacturing faced increasing competition from foreign countries as the turn of the twenty-first century approached. What happened next is more than depressing for Millinocket and most other factory towns. The next chapter of the story is heartbreaking.

Millinocket was built by the mill

Raging water flows through Millinocket in northern Penobscot County. Runoff from the Mount Katahdin highlands forms the West Branch Penobscot River roughly 30 miles east of Millinocket. Surveyors for the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad noticed the potential of the river’s power in the 1890s. Businessman Garret Schenck, part-owner of a paper mill in Rumford, Maine, built the first paper mill in the Millinocket area in 1900. The town of Millinocket was incorporated in 1901.

Investors Oliver Payne and William Collins Whitney opened a second paper mill east of Schenck’s mill in 1907. Payne and Whitney’s mill spawned the town of East Millinocket, also located on the West Branch Penobscot River. In 1910, both mills near Millinocket joined operations to form what soon became Great Northern Paper Company. Millinocket’s population grew along with the output from its paper mills.

Prosperity Brings New Infrastructure

Schenck’s original Millinocket mill became the world’s leading paper manufacturer in the 1910s decade. Output of newsprint paper totaled 240 tons per day during this era. Great Northern Paper built the Ripogenus Dam at the headwaters of the West Branch Penobscot River in 1910. Electricity generated by the dam increased the production capacity of Millinocket’s paper plants. The Ripogenus Dam also created Chesuncook Lake just upstream from its floodgates.

Great Northern Paper's Millinocket log pile.

Although the Ripogenus Dam sufficiently regulated the river 30 miles upstream from Great Northern’s mills, increased control of the water flow was needed closer to town. The company built another dam four miles upstream from Millinocket, on Elbow Lake, to address the problem. Water buildup from this dam conjoined several small lakes into one large body of water. The resulting Pemadumcook Chain of Lakes, also known simply as Twin Lakes, has a surface area of 18,300 acres. Recreational boaters continue to enjoy Twin Lakes and Chesuncook Lake today. Both bodies of water were manmade by Great Northern Paper.

Maine Route 11 crosses over the West Branch Penobscot River on an aging through-truss bridge four miles southwest of Millinocket. Travelers can pull off the road near this bridge and see Great Northern’s dam that created Twin Lakes. A train trestle also carries the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad over the river at the same spot.

Millinocket’s Prime

Production at the mills grew in the ensuing decades. Great Northern used its revenue to became a major landowner in northwestern Maine. The company acquired forested land to feed its growing need for timber as the paper mills flourished. In 1930, then-former Maine Governor Percival Baxter purchased 6,000 acres of land from Great Northern for $25,000. Baxter’s purchase contained Mount Katahdin, Maine’s highest mountain. The former governor donated the land to the State shortly after he acquired it, forming Baxter State Park.

Mount Katahdin in Baxter State Park: Maine's Highest Peak.

Consequently, Millinocket’s downtown prospered in the healthy regional economy. The town’s population increased steadily as more workers were needed to satisfy the mill’s growing output. Great Northern Paper churned out 1,000 tons of newsprint per day in the 1950s and 1960s. More than 200 newspapers in the eastern United States were printed on paper from Millinocket by the mid-twentieth century.

Millinocket-based Great Northern Paper acquired mills in Arkansas, Georgia, and Wisconsin in the 1970s. The company also constructed the 97-mile Golden Road logging route, which opened 1971. Business boomed and Millinocket’s economy remained strong into the Ronald Reagan era. At its peak in the 1980s, Great Northern produced 16.4% of all American-made newsprint.

Great Northern Paper's Millinocket mill during its prime.

Devastating Effects of Foreign Competition

In 1989, Georgia Pacific bought out Great Northern Paper via a hostile takeover. This change in ownership began a long series of administrative upheaval at Millinocket’s paper plants. Georgia Pacific sold off Great Northern’s Maine holdings in 1991. This triggered numerous other sales and purchases of Millinocket’s paper infrastructure by a variety of corporations in the 1990s and early 2000s. Each new owner faced the same problem. Manufacturing of paper and other consumer goods was largely shifting to foreign countries where production and labor costs were much cheaper.

Layoffs plagued Millinocket’s paper mill employees in the 2000s decade. Overseas competition made it increasingly difficult for the once-prosperous mills to turn a profit. In August 2014, then-mill-owner Cate Street Capital announced Millinocket’s paper plants would cease operations after more than 100 years. All workers were laid off and unemployment became the town’s leading problem.

Millinocket’s lonely downtown

Today Millinocket’s downtown is home to many vacant storefronts. The town’s central business district is a spitting image of the depression of Main Street America.

Looking up Katahdin Avenue in Millinocket towards the Great Northern Paper office (stone building with flagpole). This photo was taken before the mill shut down.

Gateway to the Golden Road and Mount Katahdin

Although the paper mills have closed and manufacturing is unlikely to return to Millinocket, the future is not completely bleak for Maine’s former paper capital. Recreational opportunities abound in the Mount Katahdin region. Skiers and snowmobilers visit the Millinocket area in winter. Boaters, hikers, anglers, and campers enjoy the area’s vast lakes and mountains in the summer. Hopefully some of the visitors that come to Millinocket to enjoy the outdoors will fuel reinvestment and economic development in the community’s downtown.