From collection Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company Collection
LB2021.17.123275
Dockworkers load lumber from a rail fright car onto Schooner Emily I. White at the Cape Jellison wharf. Three other schooners are tied up farther out the wharf. Several railroad flat cars, some with lumber, are visibleon the track nearest the schooners; other freight cars are visible on the far side of the wharf. A huge warehouse for storing and bagging potatoes spans the distant end of the wharf at the left. The image captures an everyday, though vanishing, scene at the Northern Maine Seaport facility, where the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad provided important access for the shipping of lumber, potatoes, paper, pulp and other inland products, and delivery of fertilizers, coal, cement and other products by sea. Despite its size, the facility, built in 1905, was short-lived as "shipments declined, timberlands were depleted, the potato boom slumped, fertilizer plants were built elsewhere, , and freight transport by rail increased. In 1924 it all went up in smoke." [ Maine On Glass] At the time this photograph was made, transport via schooner was being rapidly replaced by steel-hulled steam-powered vessels.
