WILLOW CREEK — The Willow Creek Hardwood Flooring Company has completed a residence for the mill manager on Mill Pond Road. The Gazette describes it as a handsome two-story structure with a covered porch and views of the mill race.
The lumber for the interior trim and flooring was milled at the company’s own planer, a demonstration of product quality. “Every board in this house was cut, dried, and planed on our machinery,” said mill manager Jeremiah Collins. “It is the best advertisement we could have.”
The house’s construction materials, including window glass, plumbing fixtures, and roofing slate, were shipped from Bangor on the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad. In the days of Thorne & Sons Shipworks, such materials would have come upriver by sloop, a journey of days. By rail, they arrive in hours.
“The railroad made this house possible,” Collins acknowledged. “And the mill makes the railroad necessary. They are the same thing, really.”
The house stands as a symbol of the mill’s confidence in Willow Creek’s future, a future built on rails rather than river currents. It would later be inherited by the Thibodeau family, fifth-generation carpenters whose lineage traces back to the Thorne yard.