Years ago, the Cole Land Transportation Museum in Bangor had to stop accepting donations of antique and historic vehicles. Despite the museum’s cavernous building that takes up nearly a full acre, the organization had simply run out of room.
It’s not that museum staff wouldn’t love to take more donations. But it’s already jam-packed with everything from a full-size train station to a selection of sleds, baby carriages and bicycles — a collection that began 50 years ago this fall, when founder Galen Cole first created the museum.
What started as a display of classic trucks from Cole’s Express, the longtime Bangor trucking company founded by Cole’s father in 1917, quickly blossomed into hundreds of vehicles, artifacts, photos and other donated items. When the museum moved out of its space at the Cole’s Express offices in 1990 into the new building across the street on Perry Road, it was already nearly full.
Here are six items on display there that help bring the history of Maine and the U.S. to life through cars, trucks, snow plows, trains and other things that go.
The last remnants of the first railroad in Maine
While the locomotive from the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad that’s on display is certainly more eye-catching, there’s a less flashy but still important piece of Maine railroad history just a few feet away. Housed inside a boxcar are six railroad ties from the Veazie Railroad, one of the very first rail lines in the United States and the first-ever in Maine, which ran between Bangor and Milford starting in 1836 — less than ten years after the first-ever public railroad in the U.S. was chartered in Maryland in 1827.
The Veazie Railroad had several owners, including its most famous proprietor, Gen. Samuel Veazie, for whom the town is named. It shut down operations in 1870, and the rail lines were removed and all stock sold off. While transforming the old rail bed into a bike path, in 1993 the Old Town Water District discovered the six rail ties, which were preserved in a clay deposit, and later donated them to the museum.
The largest collection of snow removal equipment in the country
One of the first things you see when you walk into the museum is a long row of hulking snow plows — the largest collection of snow removal equipment in the country, and a testament to Maine’s long history of innovation when it comes to making roads and rails passable during snowy winters. Among the highlights are a massive 1900 snow roller used to pack snow down so horses could pull sleighs over roads; a huge 1940 tractor fitted with a Maine-built Sargent snow plow that could clear a 17.5 foot wide path; and a 1935 snow plow inspired by the Maine-built Lombard Steam Log Hauler.
A horse-drawn dental wagon
While the Cole Museum is best known for its gas-powered vehicles, there are plenty of horse-drawn vehicles there as well — including a dental wagon operated by the colorful Dr. Henry A. Mansfield. Mansfield drove his dental wagon to towns across Washington County, offering tooth extractions for a quarter and dentures for $12.50 around the turn of the 20th century. Mansfield claimed he could extract 22 teeth in 22 seconds, and had his wedding ring made out of gold fillings from teeth he’d pulled. He had a dental drill powered by a foot pedal, which is also on display at the museum, though by the time Mansfield retired from dentistry in 1966 at age 92, he’d hopefully moved onto more delicate equipment.
The first-ever Maine-made mass-produced sleds
The Morton family of the Oxford County town of Paris started making sleds in their kitchen in 1861, and later founded Paris Manufacturing, which made sleds and toboggans for decades. The company still exists today in South Paris as Paricon and is the official manufacturer of Flexible Flyer sleds, and is still owned by the fifth generation of the Morton family. The museum has a wide array of antique Paris sleds on display.
A Getchell Brothers ice wagon
After 133 years, in 2021 the Brewer-based Getchell Brothers ice company was sold to ice producers Arctic Glacier. In the late 19th century, before the dawn of the electric refrigerator, Maine’s ice harvest employed tens of thousands of people and was a multi-million dollar industry. Ice delivery men from Getchell Brothers would bring blocks of ice via horse-drawn wagons to households all across Maine — an example of which is housed at the museum.
A real reconstructed Maine train station
Galen Cole’s father, Cole’s Express founder Allie Cole, started working for a living when he was eight years old. Among those early jobs was at the Maine Central Railroad station in his hometown of Enfield, where he eventually was promoted to baggage master before founding Cole’s Express in 1917. When Maine Central Railroad closed down its rural stations in the 1970s, it donated the Enfield Station to the museum. Galen Cole rebuilt it inside, complete with ticket counter, telegraph system and vintage railroad maps.
The Cole Land Transportation Museum, located at 405 Perry Road in Bangor, will celebrate its 50th anniversary with the Heroes and Heritage Weekend, Sept. 13 through Sept. 15, with events including a Night at the Museum evening for kids, a silent auction and a transportation festival and touch-a-truck.
