From collection Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company Collection
Dock Scene Cape Jellison Stocton Harbor (sic.) ME. 1545
View down the edge of a wharf with rail sidings and freight cars, and a large working schooner tied up at a second pier. Both piers have rail lines occupied by freight cars. The image gives a good view of the overhead structure on the wooden wharf, and of loading cranes and a steam apparatus. 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.
