Sept. 12, 1910: Making their first use of a recently enacted authority to overturn laws passed by the Legislature, Maine voters stop a plan to split the town of York in two dead in its tracks.
The statewide vote is 31,772 against the plan and 19,692 for it. In York, the proposal loses even more resoundingly, 436-90.
The issue started as a squabble between the inland portion of town on one side, and wealthy York Harbor and working-class resort York Beach on the other. York Harbor and York Beach residents often had their own disagreements to sort out, but on this they were united: The coastal part of town should split away and become the town of Gorges, a tribute to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the 17th-century Englishman who founded the colony of Maine remotely but never set foot in it.
Sewall’s Bridge with the York Country Club in the center background, circa 1906. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress
Inland residents objected. Among the reasons, according to York’s state Rep. Josiah Chase, a Democrat, was that if Gorges split away, it would take two-thirds of the population and property valuation, three of the four town schools and part of the fourth, all the post offices, the whole hydrant system and eight of 10 churches. The remainder of York would be responsible for maintaining 105 miles of roads, while Gorges would need to care for only 35 miles.
Nonetheless, for unclear reasons suspected of being manufactured by lobbyists, the Senate voted 24-5 for the plan; and the House, spurning Chase’s entreaties, voted for it 93-35. Republican Gov. Bert Fernald signed it on April 1, 1910.
Then the York Referendum Association, led by Chase and Town Clerk George F. Plaisted, gathered 13,000 signatures, including 64 from the Portland jail, to place the referendum question on the September ballot.
Since then, the town’s increasing number of year-round residents and tens of thousands of summer visitors have come to regard the seaside resort community as prosperous, relaxing, inspirational and attractive; but they don’t call it Gorges.
Sept. 12, 1954: Twelve days after the destruction of Hurricane Carol, Hurricane Edna slams into Maine, drowning eight people, delivering the state’s heaviest rainfall in 58 years and causing about $25 million (the equivalent of about $240 million today) in damage, mostly from flooding.
Damage to a dam in Limestone after Hurricane Edna in 1954. Image courtesy of Frost Memorial Library via DigitalMaine
It is the most expensive storm in the state’s history. Gov. Burton Cross says the damage to highways and bridges alone will cost about $2 million – or about $19.3 million today – to repair.
In Unity, with the water of Sandy Creek rising, rescuers work for seven hours at the height of the storm to rescue a mother and five of her children from the roof of their nearly submerged car. Another of her children, 8-year-old Ruth Brockway, and a member of the rescue party, Alton McCormick, 47, drown in the creek.
The storm also causes damage in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The highest rainfall total is 7.5 inches.
Hurricane-force winds are highest –120 mph – on Martha’s Vineyard. Flooding along Maine’s Androscoggin and Kennebec rivers washes out roads. The Kennebec is 20 feet above its normal level in Augusta. About 20 percent of the state loses electricity.
TV journalist Edward R. Murrow and a CBS news crew fly into the storm to record a segment for Murrow’s “See It Now” program, depicting hurricane research done in an Air Force Hurricane Hunter plane. The U.S. Weather Bureau’s Bob Simpson, also on the flight, makes an on-air pitch for more funding for weather research.
On Sept. 13, President Dwight Eisenhower declares parts of Maine a disaster area, making the state eligible for substantial federal assistance.
After the back-to-back hurricanes, Congress gives the bureau more money to set up the National Hurricane Research Project, which acquires its own fleet of research planes.
Sept. 12, 2002: A speeding van loaded with 15 migrant forestry workers from Guatemala and Honduras careens off a bridge over the Allagash Wilderness Waterway in northern Maine and crashes into the water. Only one man escapes alive, by kicking out a rear window of the van and swimming up to the surface of the river.
In terms of the number of deaths, it is the worst traffic accident in Maine history.
The men were riding in the van to work at a logging camp. Police said the van probably was traveling about 70 mph on the dirt road, on which the speed limit is 45 mph. It reached the 260-foot, guardrail-free Johns Bridge about 8 a.m.
A state police spokesman said the van apparently hit curbing on the bridge, flipped and went into the water upside down.
“I don’t know how it was possible for me to get out,” Guatamalan survivor Edilberto Morales Luis, 24, tells the Portland Press Herald the day after the crash. He added that coworkers riding in the van urged the driver to slow down. Four of them were his relatives.
The men are about five miles from their job site when the accident occurs, but deep in the woods and 90 miles from the nearest town.
The loggers were among about 1,200 migrants, mostly from Central America, who received special visas to accept jobs with Maine timber operations that year.
Joseph Owen is an author, retired newspaper editor and board member of the Kennebec Historical Society. Owen’s book, “This Day in Maine,” can be ordered at islandportpress.com. To get a signed copy use promo code signedbyjoe at checkout. Joe can be contacted at: jowen@mainetoday.com.
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