WRITTEN BY ANNE GABBIANELLI
A former log driver and man of many talents has found his niche on the shores of two lakes in the Millinocket region. Ambajejus and Chesuncook lakes both share the waters of the West Branch of the Penobscot River, which once served as a transportation corridor to move wood from the northern forests to Maine saw mills.
Chuck Harris worked supporting the log drive in the last years of its existence. That era ended in 1971. But he remained an outdoorsman, working for the Woods Department of Great Northern Paper (GNP).
“I stayed on the water to clean up the booms,” he said. That experience eventually blossomed into a quest to preserve the history of Maine log drivers.
“The log drivers were cowboys from the World War II era and they couldn’t tell their stories, so hopefully the museums do,” said Harris as he gave a tour of the Chesuncook Museum where he is in the process of sharing that history.
Chesuncook is a reservoir in Piscataquis County and is the third-largest body of fresh water in the state. Ambajejus is part of the The Pemadumcook Chain of Lakes in Penobscot County. Each of these lakes host boomhouse museums created by Harris who today is the docent — splitting his time between the two locations, which each offer an authentic representation of the life of a log driver.
“It’s a one-man show,” said Harris, a 76-year-old artist. His experience with art museums provided a perfect segue to creating the boomhouse museums.
The buildings once housed the many river drivers who helped move the logs along the Penobscot. Boomhouses get their name because they were central in creating a choke point for a containment boom, or a floating barrier, to collect the logs before they were floated downriver to a sawmill.
The Ambajejus Boomhouse was built in 1906, on an island on Ambajejus Lake. In 1916, the Chesuncook Boomhouse was built about 35 miles from Millinocket via the Golden Road in Greenville. While that museum is referred to as a boomhouse, Harris says it’s also been called a boarding house — but either way, Harris’s mission remains steadfast: “I believe this house and the Ambajejus Museum can tell the log drivers stories.”
The museums give you a glimpse of the living quarters for the log drivers who were provided hearty meals and comfortable sleeping quarters.
“They came from Bangor as soon as the ice was out,” Harris said. “We had to sober them up and they stayed sober for the season, navigating typically 5,000 cord of wood in just one boom and the logs averaged 28 feet.” He added with a smile, “When I worked with the old fellows, I did the lugging and tugging — now I’m the old fellow!”
One of the ‘old fellows’ was Nelson Levasseur, the last supervisor of the Penobscot River drive, who Harris memorializes with his historical efforts. Levasseur gave Harris his first job on the William Hilton as a deck hand, helping navigate the booms established in Chesuncook Lake before releasing logs down river. In pointing to a newspaper picture of Levasseur, who was small in stature, Harris said, “He was a ‘man’s man,’” recognizing the independent manager who exuded kindness.
The first lumbering operation on the West Branch started in 1828, creating a way of life for those in the woods and on the water driving the logs down river to Bangor — the one-time lumber capital of the world. The operation was run by the Penobscot Log Driving Company and later GNP. Best estimates are that about 150 thousand cord of wood, mostly the size of telephone poles, were moved each year through Millinocket, Mattawamkeag, down stream through Old Town, and along into Bangor.
It took intense manual labor to build booms. Booms were a holding pen made of logs pegged together and later strung together with chains. The purpose was to gather the logs before being released via a sluice over Ripogenus (Rip) Dam, down the river into Ambajejus Lake, into North Twin Lake, and down the Penobscot.
In 1973, the Ambajejus Boomhouse was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, showing it worthy of preservation. It rests on a small island, and fell victim to vandals, but in the late 1980s Harris got to work resurrecting artifacts from the depths of the waterways and near the dams to recreate what life was like in a boomhouse. The Home Fireside stove, firmly planted in the kitchen, is the only original piece in the museum.
Millinocket native Rod Angotti, on a boat ride to tour one of the boomhouses, shared that there were no dams in the 1800s. Rip Dam was built in 1916 with a rudimentary road built to haul concrete for that dam’s construction. Several decades later, the iconic and well-traveled Golden Road, which runs between Millinocket and Greenville into Canada, was completed. With the passage of the Clean Water Act of 1972 and the completion of the Golden Road that same year, the log drives came to an end in northern Maine.
When asked about the most harrowing experiences on the river, Harris offered, “Oh, there’s too many to tell. I’m lucky to be alive. It was a dangerous job and you could drown the very first day on the job.”
Unmarked gravesites in Chesuncook Village speak of this danger.
Yet the work was addictive, added Harris. “The sound of the logs thumping into each other becomes a part of you and everything has to do with weather and wind.”
Continuing to reminisce while perched on a bench in the barn, surrounded by chains and tools of the log driving days, Harris mused, “What are the chances a kid from Delaware would end up here, living and watching Mother Nature everyday.”
Harris discovered Maine on a family vacation when he was 12, and as a young adult he knew this was his home for good.
Noting the one-man show, the West Branch Historical Preservation Committee was established in 2017. Its purpose is to raise funds through grants and donations to support Harris’ continuing passion and efforts in paying tribute to a part of Maine’s history.
