This story was originally published in January 2024.
Maine ingenuity has brought the world everything from earmuffs, invented in the 1870s by Farmington resident Chester Greenwood, to life-saving medicine like insulin, discovered in the 1920s by a team that included Pembroke native Charles Best.
It also helped spur the creation of a machine made to improve the ability of Maine woodsmen to move logs through the forest — the direct precursor to everything from military tanks to the snowmobiles that zoom down Maine trails today.
The Lombard steam log hauler, first patented in 1901, was the work of Alvin Orlando Lombard, who was born in the Penobscot County town of Springfield in 1856. His family owned a saw mill in Lincoln and he began working in it as early as age 8, when he also began tinkering with machines and building his own logging equipment.
By the time Lombard had moved to Waterville in the 1890s, he and his brother Samuel had invented, patented and marketed several pieces of logging equipment. The big breakthrough came in 1901, when Lombard patented his steam-powered log hauler, which featured technology that was innovative at the time.
The massive, nearly 19-ton Lombard log hauler, powered by a locomotive-style engine, ran on Lombard’s greatest invention: a continuous driving track system, which made it the first vehicle of its kind to successfully run on a track. Other inventors, mostly in England, had developed versions of the continuous track throughout the 19th century, but it was Lombard — a second generation Italian immigrant from rural Maine — who perfected it.
The Lombard log hauler could tow up to 300 tons of lumber through the woods, eliminating the need for teams of up to 50 horses. The steam-powered version gradually gave way to a gas-powered version in 1914, and by the middle of the 20th century, Lombard’s log haulers had been replaced by bulldozers, tractors and skidders.
Lombard’s innovation helped revolutionize everything from outdoor recreation to the nature of modern warfare. American businessman Benjamin Holt — founder of one of the companies that became Caterpillar, Inc — bought the rights to Lombard’s patent in 1903 and began producing a wide array of tracked vehicles. Those vehicles led directly to the invention of the military tank during World War I, first developed in England. Tanks were one of the innovations that gave Allied forces the upper hand during the later years of the war, all based fundamentally on Lombard’s initial invention.
The Lombard log hauler also helped inspire the development of the first snow vehicles. In addition to its continuous track system, the hauler also had two pairs of skis affixed to a steering system at the front of the vehicle. It was an innovation that, years later, would inspire the very first commercially available snowmobiles, including Canadian inventor Joseph-Armand Bombardier’s first true snowmobile, patented in 1935. Bombardier would later found the company Ski-Doo, still one of the largest snow vehicle companies in the world.
Lombard’s steam-powered log hauler was essentially obsolete by 1930, and only ten functioning examples of the machine are known to exist today — several of which are in Maine, including at the Maine Forest and Logging Museum in Bradley, the Lumberman’s Museum in Patten, and the Owls Head Transportation Museum.
Though his name has long been overshadowed by other inventors like Bombardier and Holt, Lombard’s home in Waterville was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, and a mountain in Antarctica was named for him in 1961, in honor of his contributions to the development of snow vehicles.
If you’re out this winter riding the trails on your snowmobile — or, for that matter, if you’re operating a Caterpillar-made piece of equipment, or even a tank in the army — remember that it was a guy from rural Maine who had the big idea that paved the way for all of it.
