Cars were catching on all over Maine nearly a century ago

Late one summer night a century ago, two red automobiles half hidden in a cloud of dust tore down Main Street through downtown Bangor and over the Kenduskeag Stream bridge. It is hard for us today to fully grasp the momentous nature of this event, so we have to turn to the pages of the Bangor Daily News.

Grown men seized by “curiosity convulsions” fell into the street in the wake of the machines “like leaves drawn by a passing train.” Some stumbled across the bridge in hot pursuit “like boys after a fire engine, and then gave up as the red tail lights of the machines winked maliciously over State Street hill,” wrote an unidentified reporter.

Back then, one horseless carriage drew attention. Two were a wonder to behold. And everyone had an automobile story to tell.

In Gouldsboro, the story was about how a traveling shoe salesman’s steam car got wrecked in The Guzzle, a huge gulley with a stream running through it. After climbing part way up one side, the vehicle stalled and then proceeded to roll backwards, faster and faster until it hit the bridge abutment at the bottom, “turning turtle and hissing out the steam till the boiler was empty.” The driver, one Jackson, had tried unsuccessfully to block the wheels with a box of shoe samples.

The damage: “Air pump bursted, two wheels twisted, dashboard stove in, three large contusions on the sides, steering arm broken, boiler busted, steam gauge gone, seat wrecked,” the BDN reported. Jackson hired a team and towed the wreck to the nearest blacksmith shop.

The papers were full of stories like these as more and more men of means ran to the dealers that were springing up everywhere to buy Stevens-Duryeas, Stanley Steamers, Columbia gasoline cars, Locomobiles and a host of other makes.

The year 1905 was a banner year for motor vehicles in Maine. A new law was passed requiring owners to register for the first time. More than 700 automobiles and several dozen motorcycles were licensed by February, 1906. The plates were supposed to make it easier for officials to hold drivers accountable for reckless behavior, such as scaring a horse and violating the 5 mph-speed limit in built up areas.

In eastern Maine, Bangor residents registered the most automobiles with 24. Rockland and Dexter were tied for second place with 11 each. Skowhegan had nine and Camden 8. Machias and Calais were tied with 6 each, according to a listing in the Portland Sunday Telegram on Feb. 26, 1906.

The year 1905 was also when the office of state highway commissioner was created. In his first report, Paul Sargent, a University of Maine civil engineering graduate from Machias, said Maine had 25,530 miles of roads and streets – 2,238 of gravel, 65 of macadam, 22 of granite block paving and 21, 991 of dirt. Portland, Westbrook and Ellsworth boasted the most macadam – 10 miles apiece. Bangor reported none.

The roads were so bad that long trips were described as acts of heroism and endurance. In August of 1905, a group of wealthy “automobilists,” including Augustus Post, chairman of the touring committee of the Automobile Club of America, set out from Portland in three powerful White steamers (painted green, white and red respectively) for Fort Kent and later Halifax to prove an auto could go “where there is even an apology for roads.” Besides a lot of camping equipment, including “concentrated foods, similar to those used by the German army,” the men carried road and bridge building tools, 400 feet of ropes and blocks.

Not everyone was happy with the burgeoning supply of autos or the men who drove them, however. Dr. Charles H. Burgess of Bangor had to shoot his horse after one of the “devil carts” scared the animal, causing it to careen down Ohio Street, swerve onto Hammond and up a side street, finally crashing into the display tables outside McCoy’s Market, breaking its leg. The doctor emerged unscathed after flying out of the buggy through the market’s open door onto the floor.

The automobile was hard to master mechanically and the roads were often dangerous. Accidents were becoming increasingly common. Maine Senate President Forrest Goodwin of Skowhegan and his guests were thrown from a rented steam car on July 16, 1905, after the driver accidentally put it into reverse and backed up 75 feet into a large boulder at a high rate of speed.

The auto seemed to appeal most to ingenious speed demons such as the Stanley brothers. The Maine natives both won races up Mount Washington in July 1905 in their high-powered steamers.

The identical twins wearing identical clothing and beards liked to confuse police by speeding by a mile or so apart. A policeman would stop one and then the other would tear by creating a most unlikely scenario. Francis was killed in a car crash later, leaving Freelan heartbroken as the steam car business declined.

Every man and some women could pretend they were Barney Oldfield, one of the most famous of the early racers. When John MacGregor of Lincoln proudly showed off his new Ford gasoline machine on May 23 in a photograph in the BDN, he indicated he was waiting for the completion of work at “the old trotting park” so he could set a record. A horse attached to a wagon looked on curiously across the street. MacGregor “set the pace” and had “the right of way” between the village and his home in South Lincoln, it was said.

Meanwhile, a titanic battle was in its second year at Bar Harbor where automobiles had been banned. Summer residents were flooding town hall with postcards urging officials not to remove the restrictions. Even if the movement to allow autos made it to a vote, it would be defeated by influential livery stable owners and “cut-under drivers,” predicted the BDN’s town correspondent. The war continued for another eight years.

Frequently, car owners were portrayed as having more money than manners. The newspapers published anecdotes about rude and dangerous behavior like this one on Aug. 10 in the BDN’s Orono column: “Sunday afternoon as one of our citizens with his wife and a lady friend were coming toward the village on the Glenburn road they met a team with a load of hay. In turning out, one of the horses slipped from the road, which is very narrow across the bog, and while trying to pass the team, an automobile came along at a great speed. The auto party took no notice of the condition, but dashed by leaving a trail of dust and a strong odor of burnt gasoline behind and the driver of the single team to pick up his wife, who was thrown out of the carriage, and the driver of the double team to get his horse out of the bog.”

In the face of such conflicts, the BDN took a practical, if cautious, stance in editorials in 1904 and 1905. “the automobile is here and they are here to stay,” the paper said, directing its thoughts at the most vociferous detractors.

More regulations were needed, but owners should not be vilified as a group, the paper said. Of course, some automobilists were “cads and snobs,” but “because a man is able to own and run a machine is no reason for presuming that he is a boor and a coward. …The automobile is still a novelty to many Maine roads, and until we are used to them, we should not condemn all the men who drive the machines for the sins of a very few.”

Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at pwreilly@bangordailynews.net.