100 Years Ago: 1922
Alice Kegan Rice, author of “Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch” is expected to arrive July 22 at her cottage at Prouts Neck. Mrs. Rice will give a reading, assisted by her husband, Cale Young Rice, in late July at the Country Club. Mr. Rice is a prominent literary man, being a poet and playwright of worldwide reputation.
50 Years Ago: 1972
“We are shooting for Nov. 1.” This was the word Thursday afternoon from Roger Mallar, State Highway Commission, planning commission on when traffic can be expected to first move across the third bridge spanning the Androscoggin River between Auburn and Lewiston. We will open the two westbound lanes and use them in both directions to provide a usable facility,” Mallar said as he viewed the progress of the bridge in company with contractor Carleton Day Reed Jr., of Woolwich and State Rep. Louis Jalbert.
Mallar explained that there will be two ramps on the Auburn side of the bridge for traffic entering and leaving the bridge at Center Street, while the finished product on the Lewiston side will involve four ramps, but only one of these will be in operation this fall.
The ramp scheduled to be completed this fall is the one that, when the bridge is complete, will be for traffic going onto the bridge from Main Street, Lewiston. Entering on this ramp will mean that traffic will use the westbound lanes of the bridge’s two spans but use them for two-way traffic. On the Auburn side of the bridge, under the plan for use this fall traffic will be utilizing the ramp that will be the off ramp in Auburn. Viewing the bridge Thursday from the span side, under the Auburn side of Boxer Island, disclosed that the two-span bridge will be lengthy. The two spans will be divided highway and the base for the dividers is already in place. As traffic approaches the Lewiston end of the bridge, when it is fully completed during the summer of 1973 traffic will bear to the right and descent to Main Street at a signaled intersection. The section of Main Street, between Ware and Pettingill Streets, will become a divided highway.
25 Years Ago: 1997
The McLaughlin Garden Foundation recently established as a nonprofit horticultural foundation a major grant has received from the Betterment Fund. The foundation accepted a $25,000 grant, $15,000 to be paid this year and the remainder to be paid in 1998. Executive director Lee Dassler said the funds are to be used to assist in paying for the 3.5 acre estate, purchased in April.
The foundation launched a campaign to raise funds to buy the property last year in an effort to save the garden from a commercial sale and sure destruction. The group’s membership, and volunteers working with another non-profit group, competed to buy the $500,000 property, but it was the foundation which garnered guaranteed loans to buy the estate.
Since before the purchase the foundation has applied for grant funding, and received small grants prior to the sale. To date, the perennial garden and farmstead has received grants from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Maine Community Foundation, the International Lilac Society, the Wallis Foundation, the Davis Family Foundation, and now the Betterman Fund.
The material used in Looking Back is produced exactly as it originally appeared although misspellings and errors may be corrected.
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