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Lore Rogers & Caleb Scribner, Founders PLM ca. 1960
about 50 horses. The cleat track has since been used, and is still used today, on bulldozers and military tanks. Patten Lumbermen’ s Museum is proud to have an original, steam-powered, Lombard log hauler, one of only 83 ever built, as well as a gas-powered log hauler on display. Using these stories, Rhonda likes to tell local schoolchildren who come on tours not to be afraid of new ideas and that just because you are from a little town doesn’ t mean you can’ t do great things.
Also on display at the museum is a sawmill, a blacksmith shop complete with a local blacksmith working with the tools of the trade, a horse-powered drag saw, many old tools, equipment, artwork, and over one thousand photographs taken during the lumber camp days.
The 2017 season will kick off the Saturday before Memorial Day with the third Annual Fiddlers Fest. This event brings in fiddlers from all over the state and hosts a local craft fair with local food vendors, a silent auction, and a Fiddlehead Cook-Off in which contestants are given a basket of ingredients and must use their creativity to make a fiddlehead dish. Each year brings two thousand visitors to the museum with many coming from Europe, especially during the peak of the fall foliage season. Rhonda said that she especially remembers a group of loggers from Sweden making sure to visit the museum on their trip to America because they had heard so much about it.
The highlight of each summer is the Annual Bean Hole Bean Day Celebration in conjunction with Patten Pioneer Days in August. Sixteen pits are dug in the ground and fires built in them. When the fires burn down to coals, pots of beans are placed in the holes, covered in dirt, and cooked overnight. The dinner is served the next day with red hot dogs, coleslaw, boiled lumberman’ s coffee, locally made gingerbreads, and biscuits cooked on-site in the open fire reflector oven. Around two hundred pounds of beans are served each year and many families come to celebrate this unique event.
The logging industry is alive and well even today in Northern Maine, with large, high-tech harvesting equipment and dedicated logging roads the new norm. Today’ s logging leaders are great supporters of the Patten Lumbermen’ s Museum, knowing that honoring the past helps build the future. +
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Matt Farnham is a Commercial Lines Producer for the Presque Isle office.
1-800-343-0533 www. mmgins. com