Happy Fall everyone! The collection of short articles appeared in the September 5, 1902, edition of the MAINE WOODS newspaper.

(Contemporary commentary shared in italics, otherwise reprinted just as it was in 1902).

Shore Property Sold

F. N. Beal of Phillips this week sold a lot of Rangeley Lake shore land to Mrs. Wheatland of Salem, Mass. The lot is 500 feet on the shore of the lake and 25 rods back (412.5’). The price paid for it was $4 a front foot, or $2000. ($73,082.00… today. Quite a deal)!

Spicy Brevity

Maine Woods has always had a rule not to publish anything from any correspondent who does not furnish his full name. We do not vary excepting for very good reasons. We publish the following paragraph received a few days ago from somebody at the Mountain View House at the foot of Rangeley Lake, just to show what a lot of news can be put into few words. Editor, Mane Woods:

First train out from Oquossoc Monday morning, 60 passengers. Parlor car full. Two trains in and two out a day. Steamboats on the lake connect every train. Big passenger travel. Fishway at outlet dam is a Damn failure.

This rail line out of Oquossoc was the Rumford Falls & Rangeley Lakes R.R., a standard gauge rail train. The train that serviced Rangeley proper, the Sandy River & Rangeley Lakes RR, was a two-foot gauge “baby train”. Also, at the time a new fishway or ‘fish ladder’ had been installed on the Rangeley dam to facilitate upstream passage of fish from Oquossoc Stream, now known as the Rangeley River. It was eventually removed and a fish screen, with the remnants remaining to this day, was installed to keep fish IN the lake. Both of contradicting efforts over time proved fruitless, I guess?

Bald Mountain Camps, Haines Landing, Sept. 3,1902.

This has been an ideal week and our guests have taken full benefit of it. Mr. C. A. Galarneau make a record for the season by bringing in Saturday four as fine salmon as have ever been caught in one day, one of 8 pounds, one 7 pounds and two, 4 pounds, making a total of 23 pounds! E. C. Hodgkins was his guide. They caught fifteen besides, which they put back.

(Landlocked Salmon are not native to the Rangeley Lakes and were first introduced by the Oquossoc Angling Association, a private entity, to provide an additional angling opportunity. They do coexist with Brook Trout to some extent and are fun to catch, of course. However, these Salmon also compete for the same foods and over-spawn on the same redds (a spawning area for trout in a river). This can dislodge the fertilized eggs the brookies have laid previously as they spawn before the salmon do each Fall. It is believed that the large landlocks being caught by 1902 was due to their gorging on smelt (another introduced non-native to the watershed) and on the native Blueback Trout. This may have been yet another factor in the Blueback’s eventual extirpation from the watershed. Proving once again that ‘it is not nice to fool with Mother Nature’).

BEAVER POND NOTES

Mr. and Mrs. A. Lincoln Filene returned to Boston Friday, after a six-week stay at Beaver Pond (These camps built by Ed Grant are now a private club known as Megantic Club). Mr. Filene and his wife are a very genial couple and will be greatly missed by the guests. They both helped to make things merry at Beaver Pond, and the gossiper, as well as old friends, will look forward to meeting them next year.

(Does the name Filene rings a bell? Abraham Lincoln Filene, together with his older brother Edward, built his father’s small store into a highly successful chain of department stores. His business success not only allowed him to enjoy six-week vacations, but to also become a major philanthropist. Filene was one of the original supporters of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as well as numerous educational endeavors including the “Lincoln Filene Center for Citizenship and Public Affairs” at Tufts University. In 1955 he funded the first educational television station in the city of Boston).

Mountain climbing is quite the fad lately. Several parties have climbed to the top of White Cap Mountain where a magnificent view of the surrounding country is obtained. On the side summit toward Beaver Pond is what looks to be a cleared spot, and people walking through that space can be easily seen through telescopic glasses from Ed Grant’s camps. Each of the exploring parties report having seen a magnificent buck that makes his quarters under the hovel which was built by the Berlin Mills Lumber company last winter. They have started him up several times when he was lying under the shed contentedly chewing his cud.

(You’ll notice what that old fox of a marketer, Ed Grant, was doing here in his report by enticing deer hunters to book their next hunt with him so as to encounter ‘magnificent bucks’ lolling under lean-tos by the trail. Ever the crafty one he was! Have a great week and be sure to make some great Rangeley History of your own).

Oquossoc railroad station