Independence Day has come and gone and all reports from Rangeley share that “the town is packed with folks from away and getting anywhere quickly is nearly impossible”. This should not be surprising to anyone, because the splendid summers in Rangeley have not been secret for the last 145 years!

Below please find some snippets and smatterings from the July 23, 1896, edition of the RANGELEY LAKES newspaper.  I found it interesting that there was some talk of a grand hotel being erected atop Bald Mountain with a projected cost of half a million dollars. That would be 18 million in today’s dollars and given the current real estate values and sky-high construction costs, one couldn’t build a Motel 6 up there for 18 million! It also suggests that all watercraft on the lakes and up Bald Mountauin’s slopes to the new hotel will be powered by that newfangled invention…electricity!

(Contemporary commentary shared in Italics, otherwise reprinted just as it was in 1896).

The New Rangeley

What a place Rangeley will be when the shore of the lake is lined with cottages and hotels and all filled with summer visitors. This is the Rangeley of the future, and not so very far in the future either. There will be dozens of steamers and launches (run by electricity) plying back and forth between the different points. Then how business will hum. E. T. Burley, Esq., of Lawrence, Mass., who was at the O. A. A. (Oquossoc Angling Association) this spring, is very positive of a bright future for Rangeley. He predicts that a large hotel will be built on Bald Head (Old name for Bald Mountain) many years. “Five hundred thousand dollars should be expended on it,” said he. From that mountain is one of the loveliest views on the Continent. With a house there, what an attractive spot it would be. Of course, electrics would take the visitors up and down. There is a fine spring of water near the top, and, by the way, where does it come from? Samuel E. Wheeler, of Portland, In speaking of the future of Rangeley, says, “it is bound to grow and become one of the largest villages in the county. The attractions are unsurpassed. The changes in the last ten years, will be as nothing compared with the coming ten years.” Everyone with whom conversation is had on the subject is of the same opinion.

Why We Celebrate

“I say, captain,” said a young Englishman enjoying passage on board an American clipper, “That flag of yours has not floated in every breeze and over every sea for a thousand years, now, has it?”

“No, it aint,” replied the captain, “but it has licked one that has.”

(Well played, Captain! And below please find a piece describing a 19th century version of Door dash and yet what would “later” become what we might have once called a Milkman).

19th Century version of DoorDash

Farm Fresh Delivery

He’s a farmer who lives just outside a Maine city, and he owns “a nice cart and drives in every day with hulled corn and milk, honey, strawberries, cream in little jars, eggs, and he will bring a chicken, a duck or about anything else a customer wants.  (All that is old IS new again, my friends).

With Sportsman…

Eagles as Game Drivers.

Eagles are sometimes of considerable service to a hunter, and this is especially true of the eagles of the Potomac river at Wide Water, where President Cleveland shoots. According to an American Field writer, eagles on a calm day often give the hunters shots which they would not otherwise get. The eagle goes flying up and down stream, and on seeing a flock of ducks goes toward them, hoping to get a cripple, but being unable to capture ducks as the peregrine falcon does. When the ducks see the eagle coming, they jump into the air and go looking for a safer locality, and this is where the gunner comes in. The gunner’s place of concealment in a blind is not nearly so safe as the eagle’s vicinity, but the ducks think it is safer till the shot goes through their feathers. Three or four eagles will keep all the ducks on the move, and the gunners get good sport where they otherwise would not have soiled their gun barrels. The eagles sometimes steal cripples from the gunner, but the knowing man does not hurt the robber birds, getting his pay back on calm days.

The Pickerel and the Swallow

Many people have wondered what becomes of the swallows. They increase rapidly during their sojourn in their northern summer home, and they appear to have few natural enemies; yet their numbers rein in about the same from one year to another. A Waterville gentleman thinks he has discovered the secret of the disappearance of many of them. It is a fact observed by everybody who has ever fished on the Maine ponds that swallows are almost constantly flying about, (snatching insects) often close to the surface of the water. The gentleman referred to was watching one of the birds doing this recently when just as the swallow touched the water, a pickerel came to the surface with a swirl and seized him. The swallow went under, but the hold of the pickerel must have been slight for in an instant the bird came to the surface and tried to fly away. He seemed weak and going but a few feet struck the water again. The pickerel must have been watching for the bird for at that instant there was another flurry in the water and the bird went under a second time, not to come up again. One big pickerel had a nice meal that day. These Maine pickerel are voracious fellows and will tackle almost any moving thing that they can swallow. One was caught a few years ago in a pond near here that had in his stomach a young duck, and another a small muskrat. -Reprinted from the Waterville Mail.

Does the usually sedate “Mail” expect us Rangeleyites to swallow that? Next, they will find a pickerel with a petrified Jonah in its stomach!

Not so fast, as big brook trout and pickerel are not opposed to rising to a mouse fly. I once enjoyed watching salmon leap two feet clear of the surface to snatch large dragonflies darting about. When it comes to being regaled of a good fish story, it is best and more fun to keep an open mind. Have a great summer and be sure to get out and make some great Rangeley history of your own!