A postcard from 1908 shows the falls with the label “Lewiston Falls showing the Two Profiles, Lewiston Maine.” Private collection
LEWISTON – Ask the U.S. Geological Survey what the rocky rapids on the Androscoggin River between Auburn and Lewiston are called and the answer is straightforward, printed on federal government maps that couldn’t be any more official or authoritative.
They read, clearly, Great Falls.
And yet.
Search any national map for Great Falls and scores of items turn up, including cities such as Great Falls, Montana, with a population of more than 60,000 people.
Search for Lewiston Falls, on the other hand, and only one place emerges on the national map: the spot between Lewiston and Auburn where artist Marsden Hartley once recalled the sweet sound of water rushing over stone.
For generations, since the earliest settlers more than two centuries ago, the name most often used for the dramatic drop that fueled the rise of industry in the area was clear: Lewiston Falls.
Postcards and other pictures sold to consumers showing off the natural landmark uniformly used the name Lewiston Falls or, less often, just The Falls. Great Falls didn’t appear on any of them until recent decades.
All along, though, the Great Falls name also occasionally appeared, as part of a business name or simply as a description. After all, especially during the spring freshet, the Lewiston Falls were, and are, great falls.
When locals were speaking, they’ve probably always said “the falls” far more often than specifying a particular name. But about a half-century ago, people began shifting what they called the falls in print.
An American Series photo card from about 1885, which when viewed through a stereograph looks three-dimensional, shows the falls with the label “Lewiston Falls, Maine.” Private collection
Douglas Hodgkin, professor emeritus of political science at Bates College and author of many local history books, said the use of Great Falls “is a relatively recent phenomenon” but he’s not sure why it occurred.
He said it is probably “an amorphous shift” that may have something to do with Auburn residents caught up in the somewhat recent issue of whether Lewiston and Auburn ought to merge into a single city or not.
In any case, it’s possible to see in print when the name began to change, even if nobody seems to have offered an explanation. Two newspaper stories in particular show the hesitation about what term to affix to the river’s most obvious landmark.
A 1969 story in the Lewiston Evening Journal highlighting preposterous legends about Native Americans in the area mentioned “Indians headed for the Great Falls. (Lewiston Falls).”
A 1990 news story in the Sun Journal split the difference even more obviously. In that tale, reporter Bonnie Washuk said the falling waters between the Twin Cities were “called Great Falls or Lewiston Falls.”
Twenty years later, though, there wasn’t any doubt what readers expected.
A 2009 column in the Sun Journal by Jonathan Labonte, Auburn’s mayor from 2012 to 2017, recounted that Lewiston Falls was “the original name for what most now call Great Falls.”
Even so, by the end of his column, Labonte himself called it Lewiston Falls. Twice.
Why the name changed, though, is uncertain.
LEWISTON FALLS
Poring through old newspapers and books, it rapidly becomes clear that until about a half-century ago, a large majority of references to the natural landmark in the river between the two neighboring cities called it Lewiston Falls.
When the Frye family, not yet a political dynasty, set up a business alongside it in 1824 that relied on the waterpower, they named their firm Lewiston Falls Manufacturing, a nod to both the falls and the growing community of Lewiston Falls, which eventually became simply Lewiston.
“Train Crossing at Great Falls, Lewiston, Maine” was painted by D.D. Coombs in 1914. Shannon’s Fine Art Auctioneers (Milford, Connecticut)
Artist D.D. Coombs frequently painted the falls in the 19th century. At least one of his works of art, which once hung in Lewiston’s mayor’s office, was titled “Lewiston Falls.”
But another, painted about the same time, carried the title “Train Crossing at Great Falls, Lewiston, Maine,” proving that for at least 125 years, residents have at least occasionally been uncertain what to call the place.
A centennial history of Lewiston, published by Augustus Turner in 1895, did not hesitate in referring to the area as Lewiston Falls.
A 1906 Lewiston Evening Journal story about the possibility of Native American gold hidden beneath the rushing waters carried the sub-headline “Strange Legend of the Lewiston Falls.”
One of the area’s best-known local historians, L.C. Bateman, referred to “our ever-beautiful Lewiston Falls” in a 1914 piece lumping together some of the legends and factoids surrounding the area.
A 1921 story in the Lewiston Evening Journal ran through the history of Lewiston Falls, never wavering in its use of the longtime name.
Years later, a 1984 banner made by Bill Hood for the Lewiston-Auburn Rotary Club was taken 300 miles above the earth on the space shuttle Challenger. It included a drawing of natives in canoes just below what its label called “Lewiston Falls, Fishing Grounds of the Androscoggin Indians.”
In July 1987, the Lewiston Journal reported about Auburn constructing a park on the West Pitch overlooking the falls. The headline? “Riverside Park will help showcase Lewiston Falls.”
The story itself several times mentioned Lewiston Falls. Great Falls got only a passing mention as the name of a nearby plaza in Auburn.
Yet somehow the name Lewiston Falls began falling out of favor.
GREAT FALLS EMERGES
A 1910 postcard of the falls carries the caption “Lewiston Falls, 1898, Lewiston, Me.” Private collection
It’s important to note that the name Great Falls did not appear out of nowhere. It’s been around for nearly four centuries.
A 1787 Massachusetts document mentions a 1644 property deed that described “the Twenty-Mile Falls in Androscoggin River, being about twenty miles from Brunswick Great Falls … and considered the uppermost falls, called the uppermost great falls in Androscoggin River.”
Companies began using Great Falls in their names early on as well. One example is a failed canal firm in 1836 called The Great Androscoggin Falls, Dams, Locks and Canal Co.
These days, the use of Great Falls is almost commonplace, including the Great Falls Balloon Festival, the Great Falls Forum, the Great Falls Plaza and so on.
But Great Falls has also been used sometimes as the moniker for the river rapids.
For instance, in 1944, the Lewiston Daily Sun mentioned gulls whirling and twirling over “the Great Falls of the Androscoggin.”
In 1947, George Wing Jr. wrote a tale for the Lewiston Daily Sun meditating on the river. Throughout he used the term “Great Falls of the Androscoggin” to describe the rushing waters glistening in the sunshine.
In 1974, Ralph Skinner, a notable local historian in Auburn, wrote a long account about Goff’s Corner, the original section of downtown Auburn, and recounted that it was built “immediately below the ‘Great Falls.’”
Skinner’s piece also referred to the “Great Falls of the Androscoggin,” a wording he suggested had once been used in colonial times in an account about timber suitable for British naval vessels.
In 1980, the Lewiston Daily Sun wrote about five possible hydroelectric sites at “Lewiston’s Great Falls.”
That same year, Edith Labbe, a longtime writer, mentioned in a Lewiston Journal Magazine story that an early settler saw potential for the development of the “Great Falls.”
AND STILL MORE NAMES
The caption of this Sun Journal photo taken in March 2021 reflects today’s common usage of Great Falls: “With the annual spring rain and melting snow, Great Falls between Lewiston and Auburn on the Androscoggin River was roaring.” Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal
There are a handful of spots along the Androscoggin River traditionally tagged “Great Falls,” including a former mill town in New Hampshire that carried the name until 1893, when it was changed to Somersworth.
Since it had a train station and a hotel that also carried the Great Falls name, that Granite State town was almost always what any Great Falls reference in a Maine newspaper was referring to during the 19th century.
But Great Falls was also commonly used in the past to describe falls at Rumford, Livermore and Brunswick.
It should be mentioned that Arthur G. Staples, one of the legendary journalists of Lewiston’s past, managed to cite yet another name for the falls in a 1938 piece. He referred to it as the Androscoggin Falls or the Twenty-Mile Falls, a nod to that old deed from three centuries earlier.
A few years later, the Lewiston Evening Journal cited a handful of other names the falls have been called over the years, including Harris Falls, Amilgonpontook and Great Falls of Pejepscot.
The one common theme is that everyone has long recognized the scenic spot as one of unique power.
For the sake of completeness, let’s cite Bateman’s 1914 account of how Lewiston Falls supposedly got its name.
He said an old tale claimed the falls were named for a Native American named Lewis who supposedly got too close to the rushing water in his canoe. Just before he was swept away to his doom, Bateman wrote, the man stood up and proclaimed “Lewis falls.”
“From this incident came the name Lewiston falls,” Bateman wrote, though it’s not clear he meant for anyone to believe it.
Ridiculous as it sounds, even Britannica.com still gives it some credence, saying the falls were “supposedly named for a drunken Indian called Lewis who drowned there.”
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