Today’s technology is rapidly changing our lives with new versions of smartphones and other devices coming almost daily.

There was a short period in the history of Lewiston-Auburn when innovation took place at a breathtaking pace. Modern communication was transformed quite quickly from tap-tap-tap of the telegraph to voices traveling on wires into homes. Electricity revolutionized lighting, and before long electric motors brought all kinds of convenience to homes, industry and transportation.

These columns about life along the Androscoggin have told about the days of forest trails, when foot travel was the only possibility. Then, trails were cleared and improved to allow horse and wagon traffic, followed by one of the earliest forms of public transportation, the stagecoach. These changes were slow and arduous. It must have been a marvelous day for L-A residents when a new and inexpensive conveyance invited them to hop aboard and, for the cost of a five-cent token or ticket, ride throughout the neighborhoods of the Twin Cities.

The Lewiston and Auburn Horse Railroad made it all possible, beginning on July 22, 1881, when the governing officials of Lewiston granted the right to build the line to George F. Mellon and Edward D. Chaffer of Fall River, Mass., and William P. Craig and Henry Masters of New York. The city received no compensation for the grant, but the railroad management agreed to follow city direction on route locations.

The details of the railroad’s origin were told by Clarence March, in the Lewiston Evening Journal Magazine Section on July 2, 1962. March, a noted local historian and genealogist, was responsible for providing extensive material to the Androscoggin Historical Society’s Clarence E. March Library.

March noted that the area’s horse car railroad and later electric trolley cars came and went within the span of an ordinary lifetime.

“What’s happened to our trolley cars and their tracks?” he asked. “All buried or removed. The automobile was the culprit.”

In 1962, a long portion of Center Street in Auburn was being torn up to replace pipelines of the Lewiston Gas Light Co. The excavation revealed rails of the early horse railroad buried about 4 feet under the present roadbed. A section of the rail about 10 feet long was preserved by the Androscoggin Historical Society.

Work was started first on Main and Lisbon Streets and it was soon extended to the Fairgrounds, and in 1882 track was laid on Pine Street. The next phase brought cars to the Perryville section of Auburn (where Turner and Center streets now intersect) in the fall of 1882. By July of 1883, the railway went to Lake Grove. It wasn’t until 1889 that the belt line to New Auburn was built. Soon after the College and Pine streets circuit in Lewiston opened, as well as Dennison Street in Auburn.

The Lewiston-Auburn Horse Railroad Co. was a major enterprise. The business employed 30 men to maintain and operate its 14 miles of rail. The system had 20 cars and it took a stable of 90 horses to keep the cars moving.

Old photos of the cars show they were quite small. They were pulled by two horses and they had a single truck of four wheels about midway of the vehicle. The ends extended out, and March commented that the cars “must have rock-and-rolled in grand style.”

March said he possessed a timetable for the horse railroad issued in 1885. It said, “Every Lake Grove car connects at the heads of Lisbon St. with all City Cars, and Lake Grove cars connect with the steamer to the Lake Auburn Spring House.”

The timetable also said, “Cars run extra to and from all Entertainments at Music Hall.” On Sundays, cars were scheduled “for the accommodation of Churches and Sabbath,” and “Sunday cars leave the head of Lisbon Street for Lake Grove every 30 minutes after 12:30.”

The railroad was no match for winter ice and snow, but they were a very popular form of travel around town in good weather.

With the coming of electricity, the horse-drawn railroad succumbed to motorized propulsion, but that was doomed to disappear within a relatively few years as automobiles multiplied on the dirt roads of the area.

Dave Sargent is a freelance writer and a native of Auburn. He can be reached by sending email to [email protected].