As the number of automobiles increased in Maine a century ago, many people speculated on their impact. Forty-eight resident automobiles cruised the streets of Bangor by July 9, 1906, said the Bangor Daily News. That was double the number reported just a few months earlier. They would double again within a year, the paper predicted.

Long-distance touring was just becoming popular, so many more autos than those registered to Bangor residents were only passing through the Queen City that summer on their way to somewhere else. Some of them were driven by adventurous individuals from other states. This was the era of the group tour, when whole fleets of “machines” headed off expedition-style to test their abilities on the badly rutted, twisting dirt roads of the era. There was strength in numbers.

The biggest of these expeditions to be publicized in the Bangor newspapers that summer was the Glidden Tour, an annual event sponsored by the American Automobile Association. Sixty-one autos had left Buffalo on July 12, planning to enter Maine via Quebec. They made it to Jackman two weeks later, battling muddy roads and mechanical breakdowns.

After they rolled down “the old Canada road,” Waterville rolled out the red carpet. Free tickets to the summer theater at Cascade Park, free tickets to ride the trolley, dances, a band concert and other events were part of the festivities. The city’s six private men’s clubs opened their doors to supplement hotel space.

Dozens of automobiles stretched along the road for miles. Maine people had never seen anything like it. The expedition got sidetracked on the way to Rangeley when someone moved some signs in Flagstaff to send drivers down the wrong road. “It was thought that this was done so that the party would have to pass through settlements where the automobile is a rare sight,” explained the BDN.

The Glidden Tour’s foray through Maine would advertise the good roads, magnificent scenery and clever people here, commented the Bangor Daily Commercial on July 30. However, a Commercial writer reported a few weeks later on Aug. 14 that Maine had the worst roads in New England in the minds of many tourists.

That didn’t discourage Thomas A. Edison, the famous inventor, and his family and friends from following the Glidden route in two White steam touring cars and “a baggage car” near the end of August. After one of the cars had a minor accident, the group put up for a couple of days at the Newton House in Jackman.

“The trip, as one of the gentlemen remarked, has been a series of disasters from the start. Scarcely 10 miles having been covered without a stop for repairs,” the Commercial told its readers. Edison seemed to take it all in stride as he sat on the hotel veranda jotting things down in a notebook and chewing tobacco.

Even an average person could become famous if he set out on a long journey by automobile. Thus, A.B. Purington, the proprietor of the Exchange Street automobile garage, got a write-up and his picture in the BDN before and after he traveled in an expensive “40-horsepower Mercedes machine” along with the owner, Mrs. Henry R. Campbell of New York, and her chauffeur between Bangor, Greenville and Hartford, Conn. Purington was needed as pilot for such a long journey.

What would be the impact of these long-distance auto journeys on Vacationland? Even then Maine was rapidly being transformed into a vacation mecca for those with enough money and time to take the train or steamboat and stay for a week or more in large resorts. A prescient piece in the Commercial on Aug. 6 predicted this was about to change. “Growing Number of Automobile Tourists Takes Away Patronage of Summer Hotels,” said the headline.

“The influx of automobiles into the state of Maine during the summer months is increasing tremendously and it is surprising how many touring parties pass through Bangor, but the fact that they pass on without making a lengthy stay gives rise to the question as to whether or not these transient visits actually benefit the city’s summer trade.” The average stay in the Queen City was two days and one night or less, estimated the reporter.

The cost of traveling by automobile was going down, the writer noted, making it less likely that motorists would stay for long periods of time at expensive resorts when they could see a great deal more by traveling down the road to the next town. Indeed, many of the resort hotels closed over the next few decades, as auto courts and motels sprouted like mushrooms along the state’s most heavily traveled roads.

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