WILLOW CREEK — The dam at Homan’s Pond was completed in early April, raising the pond’s water level by four feet and flooding the lower portion of Thorne’s Bend as predicted. The mill race, a two-hundred-yard channel cut from the pond to the mill site, was excavated by forty labourers working through the winter.
The dam, constructed of granite blocks and hewn tamarack cribwork, stands twelve feet high and extends seventy feet across the pond’s outlet. The materials, including granite blocks weighing up to a ton each, were delivered by rail on the Bangor & Aroostook line. A temporary siding was laid from the main track to within a quarter mile of the pond.
“The railroad made this possible,” said Asa Pendleton. “Without the Bangor & Aroostook, we could not have brought the granite or the heavy machinery. The railroad is the backbone of this enterprise.”
The rising water has already inundated the old Thorne & Sons Shipyard launching slip, now submerged under four feet of water. Ezra Thorne II, whose family launched vessels from that slip for three generations, watched from the riverbank.
“There goes the last trace of the yard,” he said. “The launching ways, the sawpit, the ropewalk posts, all under water. The railroad took the business. Now the dam takes the ground itself.”