Floods are a recurring story in the history of Lewiston-Auburn — from the devastation of 1936 to the yearly closing of a few hundred feet along the North River Road in Auburn.

This year, the mighty Androscoggin River has been kind to the Twin Cities.

Some rivers in northern Maine are dealing with potentially dangerous ice dams, but ever since Gulf Island Dam was built in the mid-1920s, control of the river flow has diminished that danger.

There was a time when springtime ice did manage to choke the flow from bank to bank. It wasn’t huge blocks but rather a crushed-ice blockage that wouldn’t support much weight. It wasn’t possible to walk on it and place a dynamite charge, as would normally be done to release the ice, so the jam kept growing.

One such ice jam was approximately at the Turner-Greene line where the ice flow would totally submerge the Newell-Babbit and Googin dam for days at a time. It was known over the years in various combinations of those names.

I remember my grandparents talking about the “Googin Dam.” It became known as “the dam that drowned,” not because of seasonal ice jams but because it was permanently submerged along with farms and land upstream of Gulf Island Dam. The fascinating story of the Googin Dam was told in a story written by my aunt, Edith Labbie, in the Aug. 10, 1974, edition of the Lewiston Evening Journal magazine section. She documented the Gulf Island Dam construction with photographs and news stories.

Her research of the Googin Dam, a rather low, wooden structure, reveals that false rumor was a significant factor in its construction. It was named for Melvin Googin, whom she called “a wide-awake Lewiston businessman.” George G. Babbitt of Albany, N.Y., and William Newell, a prominent Lewiston lawyer and mayor of the city, were also sizable investors. They and two others formed the Maine Pulp and Paper Co. in 1896 when rumors were flying about International Paper Co.’s plans to build a mill on the Androscoggin. Could it be in this vicinity?

The men quickly bought up water power rights along both sides of the river. “The hopes of those living along the shore were as bright with dollar signs as were those of the men who had worked so hard making the dam a reality,” my aunt wrote.

The investors built the dam where rumors were strongest that International Paper would construct its mill, but the site proved to be Livermore, not Turner and Greene.

Googin Dam was not spectacular, but it was sturdy. It spanned the Androscoggin at a fairly rough stretch of water. Logs of yellow pine were used rather than native trees, and it had flashboards, also called “snappers,” that could be raised and lowered to control flow according to the needs of the Lewiston mills and the flow of water upstream. A narrow catwalk went across the dam from shore to shore.

Edward H. Grant was superintendent of the dam from 1910 to 1926, and the news story suggests that he knew that structure as well as any man. He crossed that catwalk daily. One day, as he crossed the dam to inspect the Greene side, a sudden surge of the current washed out part of the dam. He heard the splintering of the logs right behind him and reached safety just in time.

The original investors sold the dam and rights to International Paper, and in 1905, the paper company’s officials met to consider the fate of the Babbitt-Googin Dam. It was sold to the Union Water Power Co., but the small dam’s usefulness ceased when construction began for Gulf Island Dam a short distance downstream. The mammoth concrete dam flooded many acres of farmland in Turner and Greene, and the water rose well above the wooden dam, “drowning” it beneath what is now Gulf Island Pond.

It was speculated in decades since it disappeared that the dam could still be found in good condition deep under the water.

Even though the paper mill never materialized, the dam was of great service to the Union Water Power Company in providing power for Lewiston mills.

Dave Sargent is a freelance writer and a native of Auburn. He can be reached by email at [email protected].