Millinocket’s Former Economic Engine Sits Derelict

Article and photos by Jonathan Sperling

Inside the brick building that once housed the offices of Millinocket’s Great Northern Paper mill, the floor is stripped and dirty. Walls are covered in peeling paint and have been emptied of insulation. Birds fly through broken windows.

But with a bit of concentration, it is possible to imagine what the mill was like when it employed thousands of millwrights, electricians and pipe fitters. Even as weeds creep up the building’s outer walls, the building’s upper floors still offer views of the 1,400 square-foot mill site, and also look outward into the surrounding town.

Today, nearly 118 years after its opening, the mill sits derelict, the result of increased competition and declining demand for paper, years of mismanagement and numerous changes in ownership that ended with the mill’s closure in 2008.

A decade after the mill’s closing, its administrative building sits empty as if stopped in time.

“When I do walk in the Number 11 building, I can actually feel the machines still running. The pulse is still there. That’s why I say it’s not dead yet,” said Richard Angotti, speaking fondly of another building on the site that once housed the largest of the mill’s 11 machines.

Angotti, who offered a tour of the site, was employed at the mill for 40 years as an electrical supervisor. He now works for an engineering firm and acts as a consultant to Our Katahdin, a local group working to redevelop the mill site.

The mill’s closure devastated Millinocket, tearing apart families as millworkers were forced to look for work out of town. Their children are the first in many generations who must make their livelihoods—and homes—elsewhere, according to Angotti.

Richard Angotti worked for the mill for 40 years and now works to bring new business to the abandoned site.

“It’s sad. My grandfather, my father, myself all worked in this mill,” said Angotti. “My children are gone.” Angotti’s two sons live in Nevada and Massachusetts; one is employed as an automation engineer, the other as a software engineer. His daughter, a teacher, lives relatively close by in Old Town, Maine, but Angotti believes it would take a lot to convince her to move back to Millinocket.

The death of the mill also has reduced the quality of services the paper company once paid for—either directly or via its contributions to the tax base. “Teaching staff in Millinocket were one of the highest paid teaching staffs in the state of Maine when this building was in full tilt,” he said.

Little has changed since the mill closed in 2008, as seen in this former office.

As the mill downsized, the local school also lost resources.

Millinocket, which once boasted one of the highest per-capita incomes in the state, has become one of the poorest town’s in Maine.

A decade after the mill’s closing, the administrative building is frozen in time, with the exception of the pigeons roosting in its ceiling.

Hard hats, cleaning supplies, junk mail and clothing, among other personal effects, litter the lockers and bathrooms adjacent to the administrative offices, as if employees were in a rush to leave. Awards, certificates and other miscellaneous mementos are scattered across the floors.

A logging company leases land at the mill site to store timber.

Although it is unlikely that the mill site will ever employ the thousands of employees that once worked there, former mill workers are hopeful. Our Katahdin, a volunteer-driven nonprofit that has sought to revitalize Millinocket, acquired the mill site for $1 in January 2017. With it, the organization has also taken on more than $1.5 million in debt–back taxes owed to the IRS. Our Katahdin hopes to eventually turn the site into an industrial park, according to statement on the organization’s website.