LEWISTON-AUBURN — The new LA River History Trail showcasing 30 historical markers straddling both sides of the Androscoggin River will be unveiled in a public ceremony Saturday. 

Museum in the Streets is a project of the Grow L+A River Working Group with a mission to be the conduit between Lewiston and Auburn for best use of the river, and to tell the history of the river and the two cities that settled around it.

The working group includes the Androscoggin Historical Society, Museum LA, Androscoggin Land Trust, Healthy Androscoggin, Bates College and the cities of Lewiston and Auburn. 

A ribbon cutting will be held at noon Saturday in the center of the trestle bridge connecting Simard-Payne Memorial Park in Lewiston and Bonney Park in Auburn. The community is invited to participate by gathering in each park, and walking across the bridge, meeting in the middle at noon.

Museum in the Streets has been years in the making as working group members researched the cities’ heritage, locating historic artwork for the display signs and writing histories in English and French for each sign. According to a written statement from Grow L+A River Working Group, the decision to write the histories in both languages was done “to not only remind us of our rich Franco history, but to help guide residents and tourists alike to be able to learn more about the two cities’ rich history, all while walking along the river and around the two downtowns.”

While there are 30 markers along the trail, the Great Falls — sometimes referred to as “Our Little Niagara” — is the focal point of the trail in tribute to the Native Americans who lived along its banks and fished its waters, and whose power led the Twin Cities into the Industrial Age, fueling the cities’ mills.

According to the working group, “Auburn’s history is a manifold tale of Native Americans and settlers; entrepreneurs and visionaries; industrializing and the American Dream.”

Illustrated panels will guide visitors along the Riverwalk and through the downtown, where they can read about Auburn’s past at 15 points of interest.

The people of Auburn, including the Anasagunticook tribe that settled along the Little Androscoggin in 1684, “have been intricately tied to the Androscoggin River throughout history, which has helped shape the community, the land and the river itself over time,” according to the Grow L+A written statement. The markers explore the battles over land rights, the foundation of Auburn as the Androscoggin County seat, the fact that Auburn was the first city in Maine to adopt the council-manager form of government, and the shoe manufacturing and other industries that sprouted over time. There is also information about the 1937 labor strike that caused the failure of some of the city’s shoe manufacturers and how that, and foreign imports, “largely ended Auburn’s reign as the ‘shoe capital of the world.'”

On the Lewiston side of the trail, visitors will learn about the rich heritage of Maine’s second largest city, according to the statement, including “Lewiston’s significant residents, entrepreneurs, buildings, and cultural transformations in the founding and building of the community.”

Lewiston and the surrounding area has been inhabited for over 10,000 years, beginning with the Wabanaki people and followed by white settlers in 1770. The 15 historic markers on the Lewiston side of the river explore the migration of people to the area, including a Boston-based land company called The Pejepscot Proprietors, which granted land to Jonathan Bagley and Moses Little of Newbury, Massachusetts, to settle 50 families in Lewiston. The name “Lewiston” honored the late Job Lewis of Boston, a Pejepscot Proprietor, according to Grow L+A.

“Although textile mills would eventually become the foremost employer, the town’s first settlers were mostly farmers of English heritage. Thus, Lewiston had a widely dispersed population. Only in 1823 was a bridge constructed, replacing ferries, to connect Lewiston” with Auburn, according to the group’s statement.

Now that the trail has been completed, according to Grow L+A, other projects it intends to launch include advertising when the Great Falls is running and encourage the public to go to the downtowns to see it. The group also intends to ask Brookfield Renewable of Lewiston, developer of innovative, natural power solutions, for timed releases over the falls, and will explore lighting the falls and the dry granite when the falls are not running.

The group also intends to lobby for legislation to reclassify the Androscoggin River to a Class B river, promote the river for recreational fishing, kayaking and canoeing, to connect the L-A Trails with Riverlands State Park in Turner, and to petition for signs to be installed on the Maine Turnpike pointing to the cities’ shared “Downtown Historic River District.”

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