Millinocket

Article and photos by Edgar Llivisupa

Just before graduating from George W. Stearns High School in Millinocket, John Davis participated in a decades-long tradition for graduating seniors. A week before receiving his high school diploma, he joined his classmates in applying for a job at the mill; they either lined up in the school gymnasium to meet the plant manager from Great Northern Paper Company or down the hill at the plant itself.

Each student received a pair of steel-toed boots and a number that determined their seniority at the paper mill, the town’s dominant employer.

During its heyday, Great Northern employed about half of the town’s population of approximately 8,000 people. Virtually anyone in town who wanted a job at the mill could get one. (Related content: Town’s former economic engine sits derelict)

Starting in the 1980s, increased foreign competition, mismanagement and poor financial performance led to a series of layoffs. Mill workers suddenly found themselves separated from the jobs that were widely believed to be “for life,” said Davis, who is now the town manager.

A few mill workers, like Davis, managed to recover and build productive careers after the fall of the mills. When he lost his job in 2011, Davis saw an opportunity to get a degree in public administration. He became the town manager of Frenchville in 2013,  before assuming the same role in Millinocket.

However, most Millinocket mill workers were unprepared to look for new jobs. “The mindset was like the Titanic, no one thought the mill was going to close down,” said Mary Alice Cullen, another resident who made the switch from working at the mill to a new career; she is now the town’s treasurer.

Many town residents, young and old, continue to struggle with the town’s shrinking fortunes. Some have moved away in search of other opportunities. Some are barely hanging on; the unemployment rate in town was 9.6 percent in 2016, an increase of 63 percent from 2000, according to the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions at the University of Maine.

The luckiest ones were those who realized early that the jobs would eventually go away and seized the opportunities offered by Great Northern for retraining. Gilda Stratton, a member of the town council, who worked in the central typing pool before becoming administrative assistant at the company’s training center, said that the company paid for courses she took the University of Maine to earn a degree in business administration and paralegal studies. “I am glad I took courses every single year so when I got [fired] I only had a few more courses to graduate,” she said.

Indeed, there were plenty of signs, long before the mills closed that the company and its workers were living on borrowed time. As early as 1970, when Great Northern merged with Wisconsin-based Nekoosa Edwards Paper Company, it closed its research and development  department, and shifted its investments from the Maine plant to those situated in the South.

Cullen, the town treasurer, remembers a meeting with management in the early ’80s that “set the tone that things were going to change in this community and it was very sobering…that really burst our bubble that the industry was changing, the town was changing.”

Around this time, workers saw the first round of massive layoffs. The union began to lose power with the introduction of new “multicraft” work rules that required workers to perform a variety of tasks, not just a single specialization. Gone were the days, said Cullen, when the line stopped to wait for a pipe fitter to fix a “one-second task.”

Those who got laid off early often had the easiest time making the adjustment. “It really forced them to have to seek another opportunity and leave the area,” said Cullen. “While we started dealing with this, they are like: ‘glad I got out of there, I am glad I dealt with sooner rather than later.’”

Added Stratton, the typist who relocated to the company’s training center, the men who took advantage of retraining opportunities and got their certification in plumbing, electrical and plumbing acquired “the skills to move to move forward.”

By the early 1990s, the mills were caught in a downward spiral of changing owners, many of them real estate or venture capital companies. Some bought parts of the plant, only to sell them for scrap. Others promised to revive the company but fell short. By the time the plant closed in 2008, the workers and townspeople had experienced multiples round of layoffs.

Many remaining mill workers were shell-shocked. Even with a federal retraining program and an option to go back to school, some decided to chase the paper mills around the state, according to Davis. “We were older and it was hard for people to hit the books,” he explained.

Others stayed in town and never found gainful employment again.

For workers anywhere, retooling after a plant closing can be tough. In Millinocket, where Great Northern owned most of the land and maintained a monopoly of its labor force by blocking other firms from moving to town, the situation was particularly dire. “The company actively discouraged a culture of entrepreneurial and business development,” said Mindy Crandall, a forestry economist at University of Maine at Orono.

Added Davis: “We were never diversified, they didn’t want other businesses coming in and competing for the workforce.”

Some workers maintained their belief that the mill jobs would come back. Herbert Clark, former town councilman, said he knew several mill workers who not go to school because they believed they would be called back to work.

The toughest thing for residents of the town was that that their children had to look for prospects elsewhere, tearing the social fabric of a community that once worked, lived and played together.

This is the first generation of Millinocket residents without a major employer or the security and prosperity that went with one.

Cory Osbourn 29, a server at Paddy Murphy’s restaurant in Bangor, comes from a family of Millinocket mill workers who pushed their children to attend college and pursue careers wherever they could find them. Osbourn holds a degree in music from the University of Maine at Orono, and plans to move to Portland.

After the closure of the mills, Osbourn’s father and uncle bought one of the town’s bowling alleys. It was an unsuccessful venture; his father left in 2000 and now lives in Vermont.

In addition to losing their jobs, the Millinocket region is losing its young people as opportunities in the region disappear. This is a statewide problem for Maine, which has among the oldest populations in the nation. For Davis, Clark, Cullen and Stratton, their children live in places such as San Francisco, Boston and Portland, Maine. Clark’s daughter in Fort Worth “will never come back the way [the town] is now,” he said.

Jared Robbins, a student at Northern Penobscot Tech Region III in Lincoln, who grew up in Millinocket, recently obtained an A+ certification in IT as a computer technician. This is as valuable as having five years of experience in the field, according to instructor Donald Raymon. Robbins is now pursuing a Network+ and Network Pro, certifications for network technicians.

He plans to move for work. “There’s not much here,” says Robbins.

Davis sees it as a bittersweet benefit. “If not so much for the parents, but maybe for the kids, it’s a blessing not going to the mill because they had to do other things,” he said, adding that some are making such good money they are buying camps on Millinocket Lake.

Article and photo by Victoria Merlino

Visitors do not have an easy time finding Maine’s Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, one of the National Park Service’s newest additions. While Mount Katahdin stands pristine in the state park adjacent to the monument, for the time being no road signs point the way to the 87,500 acres of forest donated by the founders of the Burt’s Bees personal-care products empire. Many adventurous backwoods travelers need such help to find the wilderness before they can launch into it.

This is completely deliberate.

For more than a year and a half, Gov. Paul LePage, a vehement opponent of the monument, banned official signage for Katahdin Woods and Waters on state roads. LePage argued that the monument was under review by U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, and if the monument designation was removed, the signage would be a waste. Zinke confirmed in December 2017 that the monument would stay intact, and LePage lifted the ban on signage in April. It is not clear when the signs will be posted.

LePage’s signage ban is yet another twist in the winding path the monument has taken toward formal recognition. Designated in 2016 by former President Barack Obama, the monument has pushed through protests and opposition, receiving 30,000 visitors in 2017, according to the Bangor Daily News. Half of this number came from snowmobilers alone.

Pretty good for a place with no signs.

The monument began in  2011, when Roxanne Quimby, the philanthropist and co-founder of Burt’s Bees, donated the land to the Federal government in 2011; she originally wanted the area to become a national park. Many local residents objected to the plan, fearing that the strict rules around the activities in national parks could limit  recreational use of the land, and that it would invite more government intervention that would adversely impact Maine’s timber products industry.

Quimby’s son, Lucas St. Clair, gradually won acceptance for  Katahdin Woods and Waters through door-to-door chats, a charismatic manner and his lumberjack looks. He also embraced a less-restrictive national-monument designation,and opened sections of the donated land for hunting, snowmobiling and other activities.

“I feel like if we’re going to be able to make more cultivation possible in our country, we have to prove it has multiplying effects. Not just for conservation’s sake, but for the economy and for the wellness of people that live near it,” said St. Clair, who is using the wave of good feelings inspired by his handling of the monument to challenge Republican U.S. Rep. Bruce Poloquin for Congress; he is one of several Democrats trying to unseat the incumbent. St. Clair spoke in an interview before a Democratic candidates’ forum in early April.

One person who believes in him and the monument is Marsha Donahue, owner of The North Light Gallery in Millinocket, a town that sits in the shadow of the monument. Donahue supported St. Clair through his campaign for the monument and supports him in his primary campaign. Around her shop hang paintings of Mount Katahdin and the surrounding area.

“Having grown up in central Maine, you know, and then having left for a while, I’m tremendously proud of this state, and I love the idea that we can share this with people, and not only that but protect it and invite people to come use it,” Donahue said.

Pockets of opposition in Millinocket and its surrounding towns still remain. For many people who have struggled since the mills closed, tourism represents just another flight of fancy.

“I still think you’ve got a lot of opposition here in town, but they’re just quiet lately. But I mean, if that’s going to happen, if that’s going to bring people to Millinocket, I think most people will accept it. You’ve got some that are never going to accept it,” said John Davis, Millinocket’s town manager.

A few stalwart “National Park No” signs remain planted in Millinocket lawns. But Davis said that at least the Town Council is now committed to tourism.

As for signs leading to the monument, they might have to await the gubernatorial election in November.

By Caroline Leddy

Serving as a magnet for tourists who search the woods for a glimpse, the moose may be second only to the lobster as the favorite animal of Maine. However, the numbers of mighty Maine moose are dwindling.

The rise of winter temperatures has drastically reduced the moose population. According to the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (IFW), the number of moose in the state of Maine is 50,000 to 70,000, down from 76,000 in 2011.

“People from away are absolutely crazy about moose,” said Matt Polstein, owner of New England Outdoor Center (NEOC) where a moose head holds pride of place over the dining area at the resort. He calls the moose one of area’s “best assets.”

NEOC gives popular moose-viewing tours every summer. Crowded on a pontoon boat, tourists are taken into a wetland area off Millinocket Lake where they’ll quietly float, eagerly waiting for a moose to appear through the trees. Polstein said it is not uncommon that people cry when they see one of the beloved animals.

Locals, on the other hand, like to hunt moose. But, in 2014, the IFW cut back the number of hunting permits in an effort to protect the declining population. This year the department proposed releasing more permits, noting a slight increase in the survival rate of moose in the northern districts in Maine.

New Hampshire, another state with a sharp decline in the moose population, has also made drastic cuts to the number of hunting permits issued: in 2017, only 70 were issued. The population, which has been destroyed by ticks, has fallen to 4,000 moose.

Climate change has created the perfect environment for ticks, which can attach to a moose thousands at a time. The warmer winters have allowed for the spike in tick presence, which effect moose calves and can lead to a fatal amount of blood loss.

Of the eight subspecies of moose, the Eastern moose is most prevalent in both Maine and New Hampshire. Wolves and coyotes were once the only threat to the massive animal, but  warmer temperatures and a boom of parasites has complicated the ecosystem.  

New Hampshire, which is farther south than Maine, is more likely to be negatively affected by climate change and the rising temperatures.

Some predictions say New Hampshire won’t have any moose in 20 years. “I don’t know what can be done about that,” Polstein said.