BETHEL — “Crazy Knoll” switches back as it curves up a small hill. If you get on Greenwood Road from the Local Hub side, it is the first road you see. Its real name is Knoll Road. Why “crazy”? Greenwood resident, Dwight Mills said, “No one is sure, but these were mill houses. They think it is the crazy way the houses were laid out,”
The mill was E.L. Tibbetts Spool Company; workers could walk to work from their homes on Crazy Knoll.
There are many oddly-named places in Greenwood — a few in Bethel and Woodstock too. Mills and his brother, Blaine are Greenwood town historians who know these places well.
On Aug. 2, Blaine and Bethel Historian Will Chapman held a program at the Greenwood Historical Society called, “You can’t get there from here.” It was about isolated neighborhoods in Greenwood.
See Ya Lane in Greenwood. Rose Lincoln/Bethel Citizen
Back to Crazy Knoll and the Tibbetts Spool Company, Dwight said he was a child when, “the old mill burned in 1950. I stood out out and watched it burn. This town was in trouble for three years,” he said referring to the many jobs lost.
Spark’s wrote back. “According to Historian Blaine Mills, he says it should be Locke’s Mills as they [the mills] were owned by Mr. Samuel Locke.”
Another Greenwood history buff, Chris Dunham, wrote on Facebook that Locke Mills lost it’s apostrophe 130 years ago when the U.S. Post Office changed it. (This part of the story is to be continued … )
Land ‘locked’
In another corner of Greenwood is the Bethel triangle. I met a couple that live there. They said from the triangle you can’t get to another part of Bethel without passing through Greenwood and/or Woodstock first.
Greenwood’s Irish Neighborhood is also a landlocked area, not congruent by Greenwood’s roads to the rest of the town. This causes occasional difficulties for the isolated inhabitants. https://preprod.sunjournal.com/2023/03/16/were-on-the-lost-side-of-the-mountain/
Corners
The corner of Walker’s Mill’s Road and Intervale Road in Bethel was called Cozy Corner. There was once a store there, said Mills.
Honest Corner is in Bethel Village on Upper Main Street. It is where Church, Broad, Main and Mill Hill Streets meet and is said to have been named for the shopkeepers who made honest transactions there. An old photo of Honest corner is in the Bethel Resort and Suites, in the hall by Millbrook Tavern.
Streets, trails
While the Bethel shopkeepers were known to be honest, unfortunately people have dishonestly stolen and not returned the street sign of Zipadee Do Da Lane (ZDD) in Greenwood. (I would mention where the street is, but … ).
See Ya Lane is near ZDD lane and must have a story, but I don’t know it.
Mills said he became a rock hound on Bootlegger’s Trail, off Bird Hill Road – the one in the village, there are two, he said. (huh?).
“That’s where I grew up,” said Mills. Across the street from his house was a trail where he’d hunt for sheets of black mica.
He said behind Greenwood Town Office on Gore Road was a farmstead called the Cliff Swan house. “Turns out when people got out of work at the mill, they’d go out that trail to get their liquor during Prohibition.”
Horseshoe Trail runs behind Mt. Abram, and over Patch Mountain, said Mills. “It was the road from Bethel to Portland.” Somewhere back there is the Irish neighborhood, too.
Debra Hertell wrote to say the East Bethel Road was once called Bloody Street. “When I was a little girl, we got our CMP [Central Maine Power] bills ‘for service on Bloody Street.’ I’m not sure when it was changed to East Bethel Road. There is also a boulder by Neal Olsen’s house called Bloody Rock.”
Hertell explained the rock. Apparently there were two families or boys that didn’t get along and the boys would meet at the big boulder and fight until they were bloody.
Chapman weighed in too with his take on “Bloody Street.” He said he believed it referred not to the whole of the East Bethel Road, but just the short cut-off road between 26 and East Bethel Road (now Paris Road).
“The Patch” is the Railroad Street area in Woodstock’s Village. Coming from Bethel and before you get to town office, you take a sharp right off Route 26. It connects to railroad street at the other end.
Following several thefts, the Alcohol Mary Road sign now sits on a 15-foot pole and a homemade version is nailed on a tree. Rose Lincoln/Bethel Citizen
Miscellanea
The Andy Valley League is the official name for the baseball/softball teams in this area. It takes a minute but you’ll figure out why.
Mills said to find Greenwood’s Velvet Hollow, get on Old County Road in Woodstock and take a right before the railroad tracks onto Rowe Hill Road and another right behind Twitchell Pond. It turns into Greenwood by the time you get there. “Not too far in, there is a sag and a wet area.” He said his brother thinks it got it’s name because of all the mosses that grow there.
My husband and I tried to find it without any luck. My aha moment came later that day we ran into Brian and Suzanne Dunham who own Velvet Hollow Sugar Works. They told us where we went wrong.
Stickytown is in Rumford where some molasses spilled. Shadagee is on the west side of Twitchell Road on the Greenwood Road. “It’s called Greenwood Center, but was always known as Shadagee,” explains Mills, who said the reason for the name is unclear.
On Route 232 , off Route 26 near a landscaping business, is Pinhook. “Somebody years ago used a pin to fish with and that’s how the name came about,” said Mills.
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