Bangor History - Wayne Reilly - Bangor Daily News

'Benzine buggies' roared past the 4-wheeled competition

As spring approached a century ago, a whiff of gasoline was in the air as the internal combustion engine made vast strides in the race for transportation supremacy. more

By Wayne Reilly
Special to the NEWS | 3/15/10 | 371 views

Logger treatment stirred readers

Muckraking journalism was in its heyday a century ago. Meat packers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, oil barons and slumlords got their due. In Maine, saloons and fish canneries entered the spotlight … more

By Wayne Reilly
Special to the NEWS | 3/8/10 | 511 views

Horses raced on frozen Penobscot in 1909

The freezing of the Penobscot River each winter a century ago was presented in the newspapers as a great epic. more

By Wayne Reilly
Special to the NEWS | 3/1/10 | 700 views

Bangor men testified against ice monopoly

“SEASON IS NEAR. Ice Harvesting Will Commence in Short Time. IMPORTANT INDUSTRY. Gives Employment to Many Bangor Men ... .” With this multitiered headline on Nov. 15, 1909, the Bangor Daily … more

By Wayne Reilly
Special to the NEWS | 2/22/10 | 849 views

Penobscot County farmers ‘woke up’ to potato market as rail transport grew

Ah, for those good old days when you could buy a freshly slaughtered rabbit for supper at the open-air farmers market in downtown Bangor in the depths of winter. “The fine weather of Tuesday … more

By Wayne Reilly
Special to the NEWS | 2/15/10 | 685 views

Bangor was fed up with state liquor detectives

Maine liquor detectives invaded Bangor during the spring and summer of 1909 in a major effort to crush the Queen City’s booze business. This was not the first assault by the much-reviled Sturgis … more

By Wayne Reilly
Special to the NEWS | 2/8/10 | 1823 views

Capt. Atwood saved ship from deadly fire and ice

Fire or ice? The conundrum posed by a famous poet failed to puzzle Capt. Horace Atwood in 1872. As his smoldering ship sped across the Indian Ocean, fire and ice were a deadly combination, conspiring … more

By Wayne Reilly
Special to the NEWS | 2/1/10 | 845 views

Just how good were Bangor’s ‘good old days’?

“Ah, the good old days. May they never return!” This old saying has ample meaning when we consider conditions in Bangor (and other cities) a century ago as reflected in the newspapers. I’ll … more

By Wayne Reilly
Special to the NEWS | 1/25/10 | 856 views

New garages in Bangor fueled early motor mania

When the first automobiles arrived in Bangor in 1900, some people laughed while others cursed. Many predicted the “devil carts” would never replace horses. By 1905, however, Maine began requiring … more

By Wayne Reilly
Special to the NEWS | 1/18/10 | 1158 views

Analyst dubbed Bangor ‘a new empire of Maine’

Now that it was no longer “the lumber capital of the world,” Bangor was uneasy about its status in the rapidly changing global economy. Fate had decreed some time ago that the Queen City of the … more

By Wayne Reilly
Special to the NEWS | 1/11/10 | 1415 views