Can you imagine being hoisted aloft in a tin bucket to a height slightly more than the peak of the Bunker Hill monument?

A Lewiston Evening Journal newsman had that experience nearly 100 years ago when he ascended to the top of the nearly completed Bates Mill powerhouse chimney.

Dan S. Dexter described the breathtaking event in great detail and with an ample amount of wry Down East humor. He even borrowed a camera to document his feat with several spectacular photos. His experience was a wonder known to few in this area at the time.

In 1914, a bird’s-eye view of the countryside was a fanciful phrase reserved for only a few daring individuals. Barnstorming biplane pilots at local fairs might take an adventurous passenger aloft, or tethered hot air balloons could provide an awesome panorama not afforded to the average resident of the Twin Cities.

That chimney at the Bates Mill is still a prominent feature of the L-A skyline. It towers above Lincoln Street in Lewiston and it is unmistakably visible for nearly half a mile to Auburn drivers on the straight portion of Turner Street from Lake Auburn Avenue to Center Street.

“The ride (to the chimney top) was only a short one, 225 feet at least, but the trouble was that it was straight up in the air and not on the level,” Dexter wrote. “The conveyance was an iron bucket 13 inches deep and 26 inches in diameter.”

Dexter said the bucket was hoisted on a half-inch steel cable by a steam engine.
“As a two-thirds point on the chimney was reached, Morris Cushman, the fellow on the job and the guardian of the bucket, gave vent to the sentiment that we were traveling at a slow pace and wondered why the man at the levers didn’t shoot us up a little faster. At that time the bucket was chasing itself around in circles and working the rise in approximately 16 seconds. I mentioned to Cushman between gasps, that my half of the bucket was going plenty fast enough but I guess he didn’t hear me.”

It was a remarkable ride for Dexter, but just another day’s work for Cushman and several masons already at the top who were laying the final courses of bricks. Normally they would climb to their workplace by ladder inside the huge chimney, but the staging needed at the top for the final course meant that the outside hoist for bricks and workers was necessary.

“Lake Auburn, the Androscoggin River and the city looked like a setting of toys,” Dexter wrote. “You got the feeling you could reach down and scoop up the foam from the waters in the canal as it pours into the river, or put out a hand and dam the course of the river.”

The newsman’s story was filled with facts about the powerhouse chimney. He said the top is 14 feet and 8 inches in diameter. Work on it began on July 25, 1914, and it grew 5 feet a day until completion in October. Placement of an iron cap on the rim took place 15 days ahead of the contract requirements.

Two shells of brick encompass the shaft that is uniformly eight feet in diameter. The base, which is 22½ feet in diameter, reduces to 11 feet, 8 inches two-thirds of the way up and then spreads to 14 feet at the top. The outer shell is 3 feet thick and the inner shell is slightly smaller. This construction of two chimneys, one inside the other, provides the necessary strength.

The concrete base is 40 feet square and it bears a weight of about 2.3 million pounds.

The Bates Mill chimney, probably the tallest in Maine, was not the first sky-scraping structure in Lewiston. The chimney at the Lewiston Bleachery & Dye Works was just 25 feet shorter.

Dexter summed up his trip as “a post-graduate course in thrills.”

The drop is made in approximately eight seconds and, if anything, seems shorter, Dexter said. “There is no actual danger unless the dizziness (caused by the spinning bucket) became overpowering and one let go his hold on the cable.”

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