For the past two years our region has suffered from a most unfortunate and significant snow drought. A snowpack of six feet or more in our Big Woods should not be uncommon. It’s just not right and I hate it. Hopefully, this trend will reverse itself and we will soon return to our “Good Old-Fashioned Wintahs”. I read a short story just the other day from a 1902 edition of the MAINE WOODS. The writer/angler and his guide had “trudged through knee deep crusted snow” to Camp at Mingo Springs on Rangeley Lake on May 2nd!!! The story was charming and shared that “the Guide was highly annoyed with having to tunnel his way into the camp’s woodshed just to get firewood for the night.” The shed was in the lee of the camp and was well-shaded in spruce. The writer estimated the offending drift’s height at 15 feet!

With the traditional deep March snowpack comes the higher risk of a warm inland track running Nor’easter bringing big rains rather than snow, resulting in a massive flash flooding event. Back in the day, the annual run-off was known as the “freshet” and folks always hoped for a gradual one. “Freshet” …What a delightfully springy and unthreatening term for what can be such a deadly and devastating flood event.

What follows appeared in a one-page and first-ever “EXTRA” edition of the RANGELEY LAKES, published on March 6, 1896. Folks in Rangeley wanted both local and regional news of the flood and RL Editor Harry P. Dill delivered. What a difference in news coverage compared to the instant access to information of today. I am not sure as to whether I prefer it sometimes.

Content redacted for space reasons. Contemporary commentary in italics.

Extra – The Rangeley Lakes Daily

Realizing the fact that Rangeley is growing hungry for news of the outside world—it being six days since a daily paper has reached town. The fury of the storm was felt from Maine to New York, and it will be a long time yet before the grand total of damage is footed up.

— RANGELEY LAKES has decided to take on itself the functions of a daily newspaper just for once. By aid of the telephone, we are enabled to present a comprehensive glance of storm-swept Maine and New England and give you the gist of the news in general. RANGELEY LAKES was the first weekly paper published in Rangeley, but its proprietors were not expecting it to grow into a “daily” in such short time. Nevertheless, we promised you the news, and the news you shall have, even if we do have to put on an extra hustle. For the transmission of the news from Phillips we are indebted to the good nature and inexhaustible patience of Mr. Artemis Wetherbee, the telephone operator at Phillips. Anyone, save a lineal descendant of Job, would have given up in despair at the idea of sending four columns of news over an irregular telephone, while a forty-knot gale was blowing!

On the P. & R. (Phillips & Rangeley R.R. being the Narrow Gauge)

The regular train left Rangeley on time Wednesday morning, with seven passengers aboard. The ice and snow bothered somewhat, but a little after the usual hour they pulled into Redington. Here Conductor Robertson found orders awaiting him telling him to hold his train till a special, which had been sent out of Phillips at 7:30 to clear the tracks, arrived. All day Wednesday they waited, and Thursday afternoon word came from Phillips—”Davis has got back. Take your train to Rangeley and keep that end clear.” The train was headed this way and pushed as far as Dead River Station Thursday night. At this point the ice was bothering a good deal, so they gave it up for the night and ran back to Redington. Friday morning it was clear and sunny when the start for Rangeley was made, and the train, at last accounts was battling with the ice.

The bridge loss on the Sandy River is placed at $10,000 ($309,000 in today’s money which is dirt cheap for a major bridge!). Supt. Davis got two or three miles beyond Saunder’s, Thursday, but the ice froze) on the track (huge ice-cakes broken up from the river) almost as fast as the men could pick it off. The superintendent worked from early morning till late at night with nothing to eat.

The Lewiston Journal estimates Maine’s loss at $10,000,000 ($334,700,000 in today’s funds).

Lewiston and Auburn will lose $150,000. At Brettun’s Mills three dams, a bridge and part of the sawmill belonging to the Messrs. Phillips, were destroyed. The iron bridge over the Little Androscoggin at West Paris, was carried away. Damage $2,000. South Paris loses $10,000The washout on the Maine Central at Livermore Falls is one hundred feet long and thirty feet deep!

At Gardiner the total damage is put at $150,000. The iron bridge to Randolph was carried away. The water in the streets of Gardiner was so deep that businessmen cruised about in canoes. At Belfast it was the worst gale of the season. Nearly all of the upper bridge was carried away, and seventy feet of the lower bridge; piles and all were carried away. The streets in the lower part of the city were so overflowed as to render passage impossible.

Think Snow (one more whopper would be nice) and prayers for a gradual “Freshet”. Stay dry and make sure your sump pump is ready. I wish all a historically good week!

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