603 NAVIGATOR / OUR TOWN
Log drive boom piers in the Androscoggin River are the only reminders of the log drives, when thousands of huge tree trunks ran downriver.
Berlin: The City That Trees Built North Country history and heritage preserved
BY BARBARA RADCLIFFE ROGERS | PHOTOGRAPHY BY STILLMAN ROGERS
L
ong before Europeans explored the Upper Androscoggin River, Eastern Abenaki used it as a highway, camping in what is now Berlin to mine an important resource. At the crest of Mount Jasper, which rises sharply behind the center of Berlin, the Abenaki discovered rhyolite, a fine-grained igneous rock that could be flaked into hard, sharp points for arrows and spears. A series of shallow pits along bands of rhyolite atop Mount Jasper are among the very few documented Native American mining sites in the Eastern United States. Stone tools and finished projectile points discovered near the mine and at campsites along the Androscoggin are displayed at the Berlin Public Library on Main Street. These are labeled, and a brochure offers more details about the artifacts and the mine. Land for the town of Maynesborough was granted by Colonial governor John
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Wentworth, but the claims were never taken up. It wasn’t until 1823 that settlers came to establish farms, reincorporating it as Berlin in 1829. Set alongside a river amid miles of virgin forest, logging and wood industries were more productive than farming. The falls of the Androscoggin provided power for mills, and the raw material was all around them. In 1851, the railroad arrived, connecting Berlin to markets, and soon thereafter H. Winslow & Company built a large sawmill at the falls. In 1868, William Wentworth Brown and Lewis T. Brown bought the mill and its timber and water rights, changing the name to the Berlin Mills Company. The arrival of the Boston and Maine Railroad opened even more markets, and by the early 20th century, several pulp and paper mills were active in Berlin. The Berlin Mills, the biggest and the
major employer, changed its name to the Brown Company because of anti-German sentiment during World War I. Brown Company survived the Depression and World War II, although barely, and changed hands repeatedly before the last owner, Fraser Papers, closed the mills entirely in 2006, displacing 250 employees. At its height, the Brown Company owned more than three million acres of Quebec woodlands and more throughout the East, employing more than 9,000 men to operate the mills and cut the timber that supplied them. During the winter, men at logging camps deep in the woods cut timber that was floated down the river on the spring runoff. Today, only the boom piers that stand out as tiny islands along the river’s center are reminders of the log drives, when thousands
