Unsafe building razed despite long history President Grant visited ‘Wilson House’

BIG MOOSE TOWNSHIP – An aging and dilapidated building once visited by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1885 was demolished last month with little fanfare.

Known over the years either as Wilson’s Tavern, the Outlet House or Moosehead House, the building located at Wilson’s on Moosehead Lake was in such poor condition that it was considered a hazard.

Wilson’s is a village of housekeeping cottages located at the headwaters of the Kennebec River and the shore of Moosehead Lake.

Local firefighters contracted to burn the six-story building used the project as a training exercise on Nov. 20, according to owners Scott and Alison Snell, whose home is located about 15 feet away. “The firefighters did a great job,” Scott Snell said Wednesday.

The decision to have the building burned was elementary, according to Snell. The cost to have the building restored would have been prohibitive.

“It just simply would have cost so much money that it wasn’t worth it,” he said. “We kind of looked at all angles and all avenues and decided that [burning the building] was the best way to go.”

The building that was demolished was of historical interest, according to Dr. Everett Parker of the Moosehead Historical Society.

Henry Wilson, a Union army veteran from Massachusetts, moved in the mid-1860s to the property, where he built a sawmill.

Historical records provided by Parker indicated that Wilson had a house floated down from the north end of Moosehead Lake, which became the first structure at East Outlet. The building was later enlarged and remodeled and became known as the Outlet House.

Snell said the location of Wilson’s, a business he and his wife purchased two years ago from his parents, Wayne and Shan Snell, was identified on many early maps as Moosehead Junction, and was complete with a post office, school and a railroad spur to the back door of the original lodge.

A 300-foot permanent dock on the property was built by the Hollinsworth and Whitney Co., which later became Scott Paper Co., for the log drives and was home to the Steamship Katahdin during her career in the logging business, Snell said.

Even though they recognized the historical value of the building and still have the register that President Grant signed in 1885, there was little the couple could do, they said, other than have it removed.