There was not a single wrong answer to last week’s Mystery Photo. That can only mean that the Paul Bunyan statue at the Information Center in Rumford is tough to miss. Bunyan, who stands very tall in Boivin Park Memorial Park with his fiberglass companion, Babe the Blue Ox, is highly visible as drivers make the turn at the bottom of Falls Hill on Route 2, turning toward the Morse Bridge. The park, which is named after former Rumford Fire Chief J. Eugene Boivin, is the town’s official “welcome” center where tourists frequently stop to pose with Bunyan and Babe. In the years before he died, Boivin had pushed to create the center and groom the adjoining park that stretches from Bean Brook Outlet to the Androscoggin River’s Pennacook Falls. Boivin also created the grouping of Native American silhouettes seen at the edge of the reflection pool there. At the center’s dedication in 2010, then-Town Manager Carl Puiia said the information center was “part of Gene’s initiative to create a better Rumford, a place where citizens can gather, and for visitors to come by and enjoy what Rumford’s all about.” Bunyan moved to the park over a decade ago after spending years guarding the parking lot at Puiia’s lumber and hardware store. And, in 2009, as part of a $6,500 economic development project, Rumford commissioned the 6-foot-tall, 10-foot-long blue bovine to stand in the “field” of the Rite-Aid Pharmacy lot near the end of upper Congress Street. A year later, art students from Mountain Valley High School painted a trail of blue ox tracks Bunyan to Babe for visitors to follow, the idea being that visitors would hoof from the park into the downtown shopping district to find Babe. But, the 400-pound Babe was moved to the park to be closer to his pal in 2014. Locally, the ax-wielding Bunyan is also known as “The Muffler Man.” The town has even hosted a Paul Bunyan Lumberjack Festival in the big guy’s honor. The winner of last week’s mystery photo contest is Bonnie Bishop of Hartford. Bishop and her husband Al Borzelli own and operate Happy Hive Farm, so they may know a little something about lumberjacks and oxen.
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