Murry St. Binigham ME. 17.

Murry St. Binigham ME. 17.

Image of a busy street scene in the business district of a rural town. Horse drawn buggies and wagons pass each other and businesses in frame buildings along the wide dirt thoroughfare of Murry Street in Bingham. The street dips down with the open, rolling landscape and ascends in the distance to another group of buildings. No motor cars are visible, but paved sidewalk and telephone poles and lines indicate a level of modernity in this remote town located well inland on the Kennebec River. From another image [LB2021.17.123279] we know that Central Maine Power founders Harvey Eaton and Walter Wyman had begun developing hydroelectric power sites in the first decade of the 20th century, and that Bingham, with its water power, was one such place. The town would become "an important Maine Central Railroad loading point for pulpwood floated down the ...river to Wyman (hydroelectric) Dam..." [cmpco.com; Wikipedia] At the left is S.J. Whitney Hardware, bearing the signs "Gasoline/Plumbing and Heating/Fairbanks Sealers". Across the street is a "Restaurant" sign, and a very large placard on a Victorian house reading "Hunnewell".