Logging and history go hand in hand

By TOM ATWELL, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2002 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

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Before the Evans Notch and Wild River valley became part of the White Mountain National Forest, the region was used almost entirely for logging. And it was used heavily.

Logging still is done in the Maine section of the national forest, said Pat Nasta, an assistant ranger with the forest's Androscoggin District. No logging is going on now, but two operations have recently closed down near Gilead.

When logging is done, a detailed plan of how roads will be built, what will be cut, how environmental damage will be limited and more has to be completed. Similar reports also have to be done when recreational areas are created.

But in the past logging was done to a high level, with little concern for the environment and, in some cases, human life.

A fascinating book, "The Wild River Wilderness" by D.B. Wight, gives the history of the region. The following condensation is based largely on that book.

The first European settlers arrived in the area about 1803, in an area given to Josiah Batchelder by the state of Massachusetts in 1784. John Brickett was an early settler, arriving and building a log cabin. The house he built a few years later with bricks he made himself still stands, and is the starting point for the Speckled Mountain hiking loop.

There are records of Major Gideon Hastings logging the area as early as 1860, and most of the wood was hauled out by oxen. One man built a dam, hoping to release water to send logs down the Wild River to the Androscoggin, but the Wild lived up to its name and washed it out.

Logging boomed in 1890, when a railroad line was run up the Wild River and partway up Evans Brook. The village of Hastings was created, located in part where Hastings campground now stands. The village had two stores, two boarding houses, a school, a post office, a number of houses, saw mills, a wood alcohol mill and the various buildings needed to run a railroad.

The site of Hastings earlier had been farmed by a runaway slave named Tom, who disappeared in 1850 after Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act. Most reports say Tom ended up in Canada, just over the border from Vermont, but others say he was killed or taken back by his former slave owner.

Because of the steep grades and unruly waters, the trains hauling logs along the Wild River often crashed, at times killing workers.

By 1917, the loggers mostly had given up, partly because of the difficulties of keeping the railroad running and also because the White Mountain National Forest was being formed. The Post Office and store at Hastings were closed on July 31, 1917.

By Jan. 22, 1918, all of Batchelder's Grant had been acquired for the national forest, except for 300 acres that made up Hastings Village and its surroundings. That 300 acres was purchased and added to the national forest in 1929.

The road through the national forest, Route 113, was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression.

Other changes have come to the forest since 1971, when Wight published his book.

In 1987, the national forest gained 1,715 acres around the Virginia Lake in Stoneham, the first change in the outline of the Maine section since 1929.

The Caribou-Speckled Mountain Wilderness was created by Congress in 1990 after a debate that dated back to the early 1970s. The law forbids man-made improvements in the most remote 12,000 acres of the national forestŐs Maine section.

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