Forest Paper Company was a

pulp and paper mill A paper mill is a factory devoted to making paper from vegetable fibres such as wood pulp, old rags, and other ingredients. Prior to the invention and adoption of the Fourdrinier machine and other types of paper machine that use an endless belt, ...

on the

Royal River The Royal River is a small river, long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed June 30, 2011 in southern Maine. The river originates in Sabbathday Lake in New Gloucester and ...

Yarmouth, Maine Yarmouth is a town in Cumberland County, Maine, United States, twelve miles north of the state's largest city, Portland, Maine, Portland. When originally settled in 1636, as North Yarmouth, Maine, North Yarmouth, it was part of the Massachusetts ...

, United States, which was in business between 1874 and 1923. It was the first of its kind in

New England New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...

. In 1909, it was the largest such mill in the world, employing 275 people. It produced 80 tons of poplar pulp each day.

History

Located at the Third Falls, the most industrious of Yarmouth's four waterfalls, Forest Paper Company occupied a building constructed in 1872 by its predecessor, the Yarmouth Paper Company, owned by H. M. Clark, Home F. Locke and Henry Furbush."Yarmouth: Leader in Soda Pulp"
– Maine Memory The rights to that business were purchased by Samuel Dennis Warren, owner of S. D. Warren Paper Mill in Cumberland Mills, Maine, and his nephew George W. Hammond. They changed its name to the Forest Paper Company. Beginning with a single wooden building, the facility expanded to ten buildings covering as many

acre The acre ( ) is a Unit of measurement, unit of land area used in the Imperial units, British imperial and the United States customary units#Area, United States customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one Chain (unit), ch ...

s, including a span over the river to Factory Island. The main access road to it was an extended version of today's Mill Street, off Main Street. Two bridges to it were also constructed. In 1909, it was the largest such mill in the world, employing 275 people, including superintendent Frederic Gore."Forest Paper Company at Third Falls"
– Yarmouth Historical Society via Vamonde.com The mill used of poplar each year, which meant mounds of logs were constantly in view beside Mill Street. Six railroad spurs extended from the tracks running behind Main Street to the Forest Paper Company, traversing today's Royal River Park. Rail cars delivered logs,

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal i ...

, soda and

chlorine Chlorine is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Cl and atomic number 17. The second-lightest of the halogens, it appears between fluorine and bromine in the periodic table and its properties are mostly intermediate between ...

to the mill and carried pulp away. Changes in papermaking after

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

made the mill less profitable, and it began to decline. Its workers unionized in August 1916 and went on strike the following month. Many never returned.''Yarmouth Historic Context Statement'', page 5
– Town of Yarmouth The mill closed in 1923, when

import An importer is the receiving country in an export from the sending country. Importation and exportation are the defining financial transactions of international trade. Import is part of the International Trade which involves buying and receivin ...

restrictions on pulp were lifted and Swedish pulp became a cheaper option. The mill burned in 1931, leaving charred remains on the site until the development of the park in the early 1980s. In 1971, the

Marine Corps Reserve The Marine Forces Reserve (MARFORRES or MFR), also known as the United States Marine Corps Reserve (USMCR) and the U.S. Marine Corps Forces Reserve, is the reserve force of the United States Marine Corps. The Marine Corps Reserve is an expedi ...

tore down the old factory, before a

Navy A navy, naval force, military maritime fleet, war navy, or maritime force is the military branch, branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval warfare, naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral z ...

demolition team used fourteen cases of

dynamite Dynamite is an explosive made of nitroglycerin, sorbents (such as powdered shells or clay), and Stabilizer (chemistry), stabilizers. It was invented by the Swedish people, Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel in Geesthacht, Northern German ...

to raze the remains. Most of the remaining debris was crushed and used as fill for the park but several remnants of the building are still visible today.''Images of America: Yarmouth'', Hall, Alan M., Arcadia (2002)

Visual timeline

File:Forest Paper Company, Yarmouth ME.jpg, Forest Paper Company (left) and George W. Hammond's Camp Hammond (right) File:Forest Paper Company 2, Yarmouth ME.jpg, Looking northwest to Elm Street File:Third Falls.jpeg, Remnants of mill foundations at the Third Falls

References

{{coord, 43.8046, -70.1885, region:US_type:landmark, display=title Pulp and paper mills in the United States Industrial buildings and structures in Maine Commercial buildings in Yarmouth, Maine Industrial buildings completed in 1872 1874 establishments in Maine 1923 disestablishments in Maine

History

Visual timeline

See also

References