NORWAY — The giant snowshoe that once stood at the entrance of town greeting residents and visitors alike and dubbing Norway the “Snowshoe Town of America” is a lot like Elvis, according to the curator of the Norway Historical Society.

That’s because there’s been sightings of the iconic sculpture, but no proof that it exists, since it disappeared in the 1980s. An Oxford man said he has the remains of the wooden structure.

Charles Longley, who also serves as the society’s chief researcher, said by phone Monday that the 16-foot tall structure stood at the fork in the road heading into Norway, where the left heads down Main Street and the right leads to Fair Street, or Route 26, into Paris.

Paul Cote, of Oxford, a snowshoe enthusiast and collector, said that the giant shoe was built by Omer Aldrich of SnoCraft, a later manufacturer of snowshoes in Norway. It measured four feet in width and was four times the normal size of a classic Maine snowshoe. It was erected sometime between 1945 and 1949 after making the rounds on the trade show circuit.

“The snowshoe is like Elvis. It appears and disappears. It’s been sighted here and been sighted there but, of course, no one’s ever been able to lay a hand on it,” Longley said. “Plenty of people have searched for it, but they’ve never been able to find it.”

Cote said he searched high and low for the giant snowshoe and found two or three pieces of the original sculpture four or five years ago in a barn in Vermont. Aldrich’s grandson, Charles Aldrich, had the remains of snowshoe and was so taken with Cote’s search that he gave him the remaining pieces. Cote said Omer Aldrich originally built it as a way to attract people’s attention.

“In terms of public relations (and as an) advertising ploy, it was a smash hit,” Cote said, adding that the local press came to the trade shows, and people wanted their photos take with the larger-than-life item.

But the history of snowshoeing and Norway’s claim to fame as the Snowshoe Town of America goes further back than World War II.

Mellie Dunham is considered the father of snowshoe making in Norway and began producing them commercially in 1878, C.P. Nisbet said. Nisbet is a snowshoe data collector who resides in Conway, N.H., and has done extensive research on this particular history. Dunham worked with Clarence Smith, who went to Canada and came across a pair of snowshoes with the toes raised rather than flat toes like Maine models. Smith brought the design back, created the form and gave it to Dunham sometime between 1870 and 1871.

Nisbet and Longley believe Dunham’s snowshoe industry took off because people saw the new design and wanted a pair.

“Snowshoes were simply an item people used,” Longley says. “Dunham started making them for other people and started selling them outside of the area.”

At his snowshoe shop on Crockett Ridge Road, which Longley contended was smaller than a one-car garage, Dunham twice made a pair of snowshoes headed to the North Pole for U.S. explorer Robert Pearey Sr. during his arctic expeditions — once in 1905 and again in 1907. Dunham-style snowshoes stopped being produced when his only son-in-law, Nathan Noble, quit making them in 1933, two years after Dunham’s death, Nisbet says.

Another big name in snowshoes in Norway was H.H. Hosmer, who crafted them around the same time as Dunham.

“It would be what you call friendly competition. They were very close,” Nisbet said. “Both men were fiddle players. They tended to have that in common, along with their friendship.”

“Somebody had a sense of humor; there were four H.H. Hosmers. He learned how to make snowshoes from his father, who was H.H. Hosmer, who learned how to make snowshoes from his relative, who was H.H. Hosmer,” Nisbet said, adding it was Hosmer who started bringing Norway-made snowshoes to trade shows.

The snowshoe lineage in the Hosmer family traces back to 1854, Nisbet said. The family stopped making snowshoes when the son, Herbert Harold Hosmer, died in the early 1940s.

The other major contender for snowshoe makers in Norway was Dunham’s nephew, W.F. Tubbs, who worked for his uncle in his shop for roughly five years before branching out and starting his own business, Tubbs Snowshoe Company, in 1907, Nisbet said. He said he hasn’t been able to find any documents about what Dunham thought of his nephew going into business for himself since a 1930 fire at Dunham’s home destoryed all of his business records, journals and the like.

“And Tubbs wasn’t talking,” Nisbet said, laughing. “All of these people knew each other. They were all very close. They went on hunting trips together. … They all made snowshoes, but they were the only ones who made snowshoes.”

Tubbs outdid his uncle as far as assisting polar explorations goes, making snowshoes for two major explorers. In 1912, he crafted a pair for Donald MacMillan as part of his ill-fated Crocker Land Expedition to Northern Greenland the following year, Nisbet says. Later, Tubbs made not only snowshoes, but chairs and dog sleds for Rear Admiral Richard Byrd Jr.’s expedition to the South Pole, Longley said. He added that another Norway native, James Wiles, served as chief engineer for one of Byrd’s supply vessels that traveled to the South Pole and also explored with MacMillan.

In 1923, Tubbs decided to sell his business and head to the Midwest. Out there, he began manufacturing snowshoes until he landed a government job as an advisor, Longley said. In 1928, American Fork and Hoe Company of Ohio said it owned Tubbs Snowshoe Co., and in 1932, the business was moved to Wellingford, Vt., Nisbet said.

At the time of the Tubbs move, the sons of Elmer Aldrich, including Omer, established SnoCraft in Norway, making snowshoes. Longley says the the factory was located on Tannery Street, where the building still stands.

“SnoCraft goes on to be the largest manufacturer of snowshoes in the world,” Nisbet said.

This was because the U.S. government bought so many snowshoes during World War II, sometimes 10,000 in one order.

“They were made in other places in the country, but what happened was Norway won the military contract. At the time, (the U.S.) was afraid of a Japanese invasion of Alaska,” Longley said. “They ordered thousands and thousands of pairs, way beyond what they would ever need to use.”

The demand for SnoCraft snowshoes was so high during World War II that there was an overflow production facility in the Main Street building that now houses radio station WOXO.

“In 1945, you could have walked down the street and looked into the window and see them webbing snowshoes,” Longley said.

Nisbet said that many in Oxford Hills are old enough to remember the decline of SnoCraft, which went bankrupt three or four times before it shuttered in the late 1980s.

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