Artist Albert Tissandier’s 1862 drawing of a balloon over England. The balloonist depicted in the drawing released two pigeons from on high as an experiment to see if they’d make it back to earth. It’s not clear whether they did. Library of Congress

LEWISTON — The first balloon to lift someone into the air in the Twin Cities took off on the Fourth of July in 1865, just a few months after the Civil War ended.

Some 25,000 people gathered at Lewiston Commons, an area that later became a city park, to watch aeronaut George Collard attempt the feat.

The Lewiston Daily Evening Journal said there was hardly any standing room within a quarter mile of the egg-shaped balloon called the Queen of the Air. Housetops and streets were filled with curious onlookers.

J.P. Gill, superintendent of the gas works in Lewiston, had the responsibility of filling Collard’s 50-foot-high balloon.

Despite a strong breeze, Gill made good progress piping in the necessary gas until 3:30 p.m. when the large bag suddenly developed a footlong rip, the paper said.

“A young lady and a gentleman” offered to repair it, the paper reported, and quickly set to work on mending it.

They were “nearly suffocated from the gas,” the Journal said, but were “fortunately rescued in a fainting condition and soon restored.”

So, too, was the balloon itself.

Filled with hydrogen, used for illuminating lamps in Lewiston, the balloon was soon ready to take off.

At 5:55 p.m., Collard on his own took to the air “amid great enthusiasm” and off he went in the willow basket that hung from the gas bag above.

“I could hear the cheers and hum of talk” as the balloon ascended in a strong breeze, Collard said later.

He said he rose to a height of 2 1/2 miles or more.

Usually, Collard said, he didn’t rise so high “but as this was Lewiston’s first balloon, I thought I would let her up,” especially because he hoped to find better weather than the strong wind at ground level.

“Floating off rapidly toward the sea,” he said, the fields below appeared to be a mere foot square, with the fences between them looking like mosaic flooring. He added that large trees below “looked like geranium plants, as though you might crush them with your hand.”

Happy to be in the air, Collard said he paused to eat a sandwich and drink a cider.

“I never felt happier,” he said, and “inspiringly breathed in the spirit of the universe.”

“Here I was, a speck in mid-sky, hanging on nothing, eating my bread and meat and drinking my cider among the spirits and breaths of the air, motionless.”

“Around me, impressive solitude, silence, nothing! In empty space, I, the sole occupant — so I felt — and so would anybody have felt with love of nature in their souls,” the balloonist said.

“It is a situation not often granted to mortals and one feels etherealized,” Collard said. “Fear, there is none. All other passions are swept away but love and awe!”

“I have ascended with persons who had never been in a balloon, and if at first fearful, they were soon overwhelmed with the glory of the scene,” Collard said.

Collard told the Journal that from the air people “appear like black specks with big legs,” akin to spiders. Horses, he said, look like bugs.

“As you pass through clouds, it seems that you are in a fog,” Collard told the paper.

Half an hour after taking off, Collard landed with some difficulty in Woolwich and soon sent off a telegram from Bath letting everyone back in Lewiston know that he was safe and sound after flying over Lisbon, Bowdoin and Merrymeeting Bay at the mouth of the Androscoggin River.

The balloon proved such a hit that Fourth of July festivities in Lewiston nearly always included one for decades to come.

By 1869, a huge balloon called The City of Lewiston, which could carry two people aloft, drew 30,000 people to gawk at its ascension.

The Journal reported that everyone cheered as it rose until it vanished in the clouds.

They were long gone by the time the paper learned it had landed in a Durham pasture so quietly that a nearby colt merely stood and watched it float down.

Read all about this weekend’s Lewiston-Auburn Balloon Festival on the Sun Journal’s website.