LB2010.9.121572

LB2010.9.121572

View of Main Street, Springvale, Maine in1949. From 1739 to 1829 no factories whatsoever were built along the Mousam River between Mousam Lake and the Atlantic Ocean. There were saw mills and grist mills, of course, but no factories. All that changed in 1829 when a plant for the printing of designs on cotton cloth was built at a waterfall in what was soon to be called Springvale. At the opening ceremony the gentleman who offered a prayer for the mill's success was asked if he could suggest a name for this section of Sanford. Gesturing toward the nearby bubbling spring and the mill's location in a valley between two ridges he replies "Springvale". This part of Sanford ever since has been known by that name. The second factory on the Mousam was Springvale Cotton Mills built in 1842. By the beginning of the American Civil War the production of shoes had become the village's predominant industry. Virtually every shoe factory in Sanford before 1900 was in Springvale; Sylvester Cummings, Butler and Fogg, Mudge Shoe Co., William H. Usher etc. Their factories crowded Springvale's Bridge and Pleasant Streets. By the 1870's Springvale was the center of Sanford in terms of employment, shops, professional people (doctors, dentists, lawyers, etc.) and transportation (the Portland and Rochester Railroad was completed through Springvale in 1871). It is therefore not surprising that when the Town of Sanford decided to build a new town hall, it was built in Springvale. It remained Sanford Town Hall for the next 35 years and is now the Sanford-Springvale Historical Museum. https://www.sanfordmaine.org/townhistory