STRONG – Strong’s Comprehensive Planning Committee hosted a bus tour Thursday to illustrate the town’s prosperous past and discuss a hopeful future, members said.

Bud and Betty Haggan, residents of Strong for more than 50 years, said they joined the bus tour because they are “interested in seeing what’s going on in the town, and what ideas the planning committee has in store.”

The 2-hour tour attracted between 30 and 40 people.

SAD 58 Superintendent Quentin Clark spoke about the elementary school before the bus left with Larone Crockett driving.

“The Strong school is in my mind a big part of the strength here,” Clark said. The teachers and the students have contributed to making it a great school and “the only school in the area that isn’t shrinking.”

Clark said the town lost a good deal of money when the local mills closed, but it was the effort of the community that helped to keep the school system flourishing. His hope is that families moving to the area who have careers at Franklin Memorial Hospital and the University of Maine at Farmington will look at Strong as a viable community because of the elementary school, he said.

Strong Elementary School was rebuilt in 1995-96, and the district is looking into changing from oil to wood pellets as a source of heat. Clark mentioned that he hoped that the pellets will come from one of the local plants.

After Clark’s discussion, the bus left the parking lot between Forster’s Memorial Building and the White Elephant General Store. Roger Lambert, who has lived in Strong his entire life, narrated the tour.

Heading north on Main Street, Lambert pointed out a wood mill built by Ernest Cousineau now owned by Complete Hydraulics.

“At one time that mill made Sherbrooke Hockey Sticks for the national league,” Lambert said.

On True Hill Road, Lambert mentioned an aquifer that runs through the area by the old schoolhouse. He said testing was done by Poland Spring because of the exceptional quality of the water.

Clark added that Poland Spring did in fact test the water, but ended up choosing Kingfield as its site because the aquifer in Strong is not as deep as it is in the Kingfield area. True Hill Road is also the location of a new subdivision with one home built.

The tour took guests to Memorial Town Park, the town beach and the subdivisions under development.

Lambert said that when he was growing up on Main Street, the town’s employment rate was at 130 percent, because people from surrounding areas were coming to Strong to work in the wood mills. “The old Main Street was home to a barbershop, clothing store and pharmacy,” Lambert said. While the town died out with the closing of the mills, he noted that it looks like the pellet plant will be opening.

The population of Strong is about 1,260 and even though there are a good deal of homes for sale in the area, resident Raylene Tolman said that is a regular trend but not one of concern.

While Strong was once home to booming businesses that made items such as toothpicks, yo-yos, drawer knobs, Popsicle sticks and wooden ice cream spoons, it is now a community that hopes to move forward with new ventures and young families looking for a peaceful, friendly community, Tolman said.