Feature article on the central-Maine town of Millinocket. Long resistant to the

Jeff Clark

Source

Down East

Date

11-1-2001

Pages

58-63, 86-91

Abstract

Feature article on the central-Maine town of Millinocket. Long resistant to the notion of becoming a major center for North Woods recreation, Millinocket is beginning to turn its eyes toward Mount Katahdin, which looms over its outskirts. A century after their founding, Millinocket and the Great Northern paper mill that created it are both struggling to redefine themselves. Starting in the 1970s, a series of corporate owners began shipping the mill's profits out of Maine to underwrite acquisitions and improvements in the South and overseas. At its peak, the mill employed 4,800 workers, but by 1999 that number had dropped to 1,300. The town itself has lost 25 percent of its population in the last decade, and is now down to 5,203 people. Each year more than 60,000 people pass through town on their way to Baxter State Park and its 204,733 acres of wilderness, yet Millinocket never developed as a center of outdoors recreation, in part because town fathers discouraged any industry that might compete with Great Northern for labor. But attitudes are changing, and the Millinocket Area Growth and Investment Council recently raised $140,000 to launch the area's first economic development office.

Subjects

Millinocket

Full text is not available here. Please contact the Library for a copy of the article.

Share

COinS