From collection Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company Collection
LB2018.10.113
Color transparency of Bingham, Maine. Log drive on Wyman Lake. First settled in 1785, the town is named after William Bingham, a Philadelphia banker and politician who at one time owned two million acres (8,000 km²) of land in Maine known as the Bingham Purchase. It is located on the Old Canada Road (U. S. Route 201), which between 1820 until 1860 served as the primary link between Lower Canada and Maine. Bingham became an important Maine Central Railroad loading point for pulpwood floated down the Kennebec River to Wyman Dam until environmental regulations curtailed log driving in the 1970s. Wyman Lake, the riverine reservoir formed by the dam, contains 194,016 acre-feet, among the largest lakes in Maine. Its normal surface area is over five square miles. It stretches northward from the dam, and forms the border between not only Moscow and Pleasant Ridge Plantation, but also between the town of Caratunk and Northwest Somerset.
