The front of Maine’s Paper and Heritage Museum, located at 22 Church St. in Livermore Falls. Submitted Photo
LIVERMORE FALLS — Maine’s Paper and Heritage Museum will be hosting the fifth annual Papermakers Heritage Celebration on Saturday, Aug. 26, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. This year marks the fifth year of the celebrations, which aims to honor the history of papermaking in Livermore Falls and the industry surrounding it.
The event marks the return of the celebration, which did not occur in 2022 due to COVID-19 restrictions. Apart from 2022, the event has been held annually since 2018.
The museum will be inviting papermakers, loggers, other industry professionals and the public to join them in food, a tour of the museum, a few matches of cornhole and even a demonstration of the process of making paper.
Founder Sherry Judd sat down with the Livermore Falls Advertiser to talk about the upcoming event and what attendees can expect.
“We have all kinds of artifacts, like different kinds of paper they made in different years. Wallpaper books, newspaper prints, a lot of photos,” she shared. “We have a lot of history, a lot of documentation, and we do have recorded interviews from the past century.”
“We have a train running because a train played a big part in carrying paper to the mills and from the mills to the customers,” she added. According to Judd, the museum has a model train as well as a train built from scraps from one of the papers mills by Judd’s uncle.
“It was back when you could take scraps out,” she said. “It’s huge, and it runs. It’s got three washing machine engines in it and it’s got 10 cars. It’s quite a thing to take it out, so we do that once a year because the railroad was so important to the paper industry.”
Judd says there is a lot more interest in the museum since the closing of the last paper mill in Jay in March.
“I think the mill closing really jarred a few people and made them feel like now it’s really important to preserve this history,” Judd said.
Maine’s Paper and Heritage Museum was founded in 2007, but Judd says the process of opening the museum goes all the way back to 2003.
“We had a speaker at the chamber meeting from Bethel,” Judd shared. “And he was talking about the history in Bethel, and when he got done, he looked at us and he said, ‘Do you realize how much history you have here, and somebody needs to collect it.'”
After campaigning for the museum for four years, the International Paper Co. donated a house to the newly formed museum. The house, built in 1906, served as the residence for many of the managers of the International Paper Co., Otis Mill from 1911 until 1990. It then became the Northern Woodlands Division office for International Paper Co. before being donated in 2007.
Since then, Judd and company have worked tirelessly to build the museum up into the building it is today.
“Every year, we get more and more and more in and then this year, with the mill going down, it’s just overwhelming what we’re getting into,” she said. “Artifacts, and photographs and documentation. If we were bigger, we could fill another house, easily.”
For more information on the museum and the upcoming event, please visit papermuseumofmaine.org.
Comments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
