When the University of Maine opened in 1869 there were only two professors, one of whom was farm superintendent and instructor in agriculture. Farming was the backbone of the state’s economy, so it was appropriate that half or more of the instructional resources of what was then called the Maine State College should be devoted to husbandry.

The years ahead were not easy, however. “Scientific farming was but little known, and many people in the state assumed an air of indifference or superiority or even ridicule toward the institution,” according to historian Louis C. Hatch. “A farmer’s boy was likely to be laughed at ‘who had to go down to Cow College to learn how to milk.'”

Turn the clock ahead nearly 40 years to April 23, 1906. The University of Maine Farming Special pulled out of the station at Old Town at 8:10 a.m. to crisscross northern and central Maine from Searsport to Fort Kent on the tracks of the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad. Two baggage cars were loaded with farming exhibits such as a milk aerator and a model of a curtain front poultry house. A passenger car was filled with agricultural professors, scientists from the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station and leading farmers such as Commissioner of Agriculture A.W. Gilman.

Politically savvy George E. Fellows, president of the university, was also on board. Part educational mission and part public relations foray, the Farming Special was a brilliant display of the university’s ability to serve the state. Nobody was laughing at the University of Maine anymore.

The Bangor Daily Commercial summed up the results of the 1,000-mile extravaganza on May 7: “At the 31 scheduled stops … more than 25,000 people visited the cars; the eleven illustrated evening lectures describing the university were attended by about 6,000 people; fully 5,000 school children and teachers visited the exhibition on wheels, and 150 brief lectures or talks describing the collections in the cars were given by the college professors and scientific experts.”

Not only had the university shown farmers that there were more scientific ways to manage their farms, it also had informed large numbers of schoolchildren they could get “as good an education at less cost … at the University of Maine in all agricultural branches, in engineering, in electrical studies, in all practical branches having a scientific basis, as can be obtained at any institution in New England,” said the Commercial.

The Farming Special caused a great commotion. The weather alternated between snow and rain. The roads were a quagmire. Travel ranged from nearly impossible to dangerous. Yet thousands of people showed up often dressed in their Sunday best.

At the first stop, Bradford, 200 people arrived at the station along with the 20-piece Bradford Brass Band, one of a half-dozen or more that played martial music along the trek. “Bradford is a new station in the middle of the woods, and although the roads were in terrible shape this did not deter the farmers … They came in all kinds of rigs and the traveling was so hard that one team broke the traces in an effort to reach the train. This did not deter the occupants, however, as they walked the remaining mile,” reported the Bangor Daily News.

At Frankfort, all of the schools and stores were closed, and about 125 pupils appeared besides the farmers. That night the expedition lodged at Searsport. At these evening stops, there was a stereopticon lecture with views of the University of Maine campus, and often a talk on “practical agriculture” attended by hundreds. Many in the audience had never been to high school or seen a college.

The next day the train started the long ride north in a blizzard that had knocked out communications. All were happy on board, however, as university students sang rousing college songs and performed “yells.” One hundred people waited at Prospect in the blinding snow even though the train was two hours late. And so the procession moved north across the whitened landscape to LaGrange, Brownville, Sherman, Island Falls, Patten, Oakfield, Masardis and other towns.

Farmers listened closely to talks on potato scab, brown-tail moths, home-mixed fertilizers, the hen’s life cycle and so on. More bands played, including a brass band impressively arrayed in blue and gold braid representing the College Ste. Marie in French-speaking Van Buren.

The journey was not without excitement. In Fort Kent, two river drivers got into a fistfight over some agricultural fine point. At Ashland, professor Hitchings announced ecstatically he had found a new variety of insect pest never before seen in Maine. The crowds grew – 400 in Island Falls, where it was “practically a circus day,” then 500 in Patten a few hours later, and later 1,200 in Presque Isle.

“You have got the greatest thing here that the farmers of Maine have ever seen,” J.P. Perry, who had driven the grueling eight miles from Benedicta for the train’s arrival in Sherman, told a reporter.

The Farming Special was so successful that another was held in June. Two more were conducted in 1910 and 1911, according to historian David C. Smith. Little did anyone know then, however, that farming in Maine was already in a long decline that would span most of the 20th century. In 1880 there were more than 60,000 acres of farmland; by 1980, there would be less than 10,000.

Could they have seen the future, Commissioner Gilman and President Fellows no doubt would have been surprised and disheartened. But there was nothing anyone could do to stop the powerful economic trends that already were sweeping the country and changing the face of Maine forever.

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