The Maine Central Railroad’s Free Bridge across the Androscoggin River during the 1936 flood with rail cars parked on the superstructure to weigh down the span before the bridge was swept away. Courtesy of the Maine Historical Society
On March 12, 1936, the arrival of an early spring thaw on the heels of a long and harsh winter, complicated with heavy torrential rains, led to one of the worst floods ever recorded in Maine history, and it paralyzed Bath, Brunswick and Topsham.
The ground all across Maine remained deeply frozen, covered by a thick snowpack, while rivers, streams, ponds and lakes were laden with thick ice. Suddenly, temperatures began to rise dramatically as an early spring thaw descended over Maine, and torrential rains only compounded the situation.
While most of the rivers in Maine had swollen and overflowed their banks, both the Kennebec and Androscoggin rivers deluged towns and swept away many buildings, homes and landmarks.
In Bath, buoys in the Kennebec “were out of place” while Commercial Street was “under twenty-inches of water.” Wharves and area cellars flooded, and the Riverfront Lumber Yard was submerged. On either side of the Kennebec, “logs and debris” were strewn everywhere.
An early bridge alongside the Cabot Mill in Topsham connecting Maine Street to the Frank J. Wood Bridge is ravaged by the flood. Courtesy of the Maine Historical Society
In Topsham, the Pejepscot Mill “lost windows and doors” as flooding waters rammed logs, chunks of ice and other debris through the structures of both the A and B Mills, inundating all machinery and equipment. Much of lower Main Street was flooded while farmlands along the river’s edge were awash, and the road to Lisbon was impassable.
The popular Boucher’s Diner was swept away “over Granny Hill Dam and hasn’t been seen since.” Nickerson’s Ice House was also destroyed as was “the Granny Hole stream dam.”
“A puppy dog belonging to Topsham’s Belanger family” was taken away by flood waters and carried over the dam and down river. The puppy survived and climbed onto shore at the Landing in Brunswick where “he shook himself briskly before trotting away.”
Although the puppy survived, three men did not. Robert Coolen, Emile Bourassa and Donald McKay were in a small boat on the river “behind the paper company” of the Pejepscot Mill. Their drowning deaths were witnessed as “nearly one thousand persons on the riverbanks stood by unable to save them.”
At Brunswick, the Androscoggin overflowed the craggy boundaries of the falls with fast and furious flows of lethal waters.
Just a few years old, the Frank J. Wood Bridge saw raging torrents wash over her carriage deck, cutting Brunswick off from Topsham and creating fears that the superstructure would doubtless be washed away.
The major pipeline conveyed over the bridge, connecting Brunswick’s water supply with the Reservoir in Topsham, was shorn away. The “Central Maine Power dynamos” at the dam were all underwater, cutting all area power.
Worried for the survival of the Central Maine Railroad Bridge, known as the Free Bridge over the Androscoggin, the Rail Road moved a long line of freight cars onto the bridge in order to weigh down the superstructure. However, the awful force of the raging river soon tore apart a major section of the Free Bridge and both rail cars and the steel span were washed away.
The pedestrian Swinging Bridge connecting Brunswick to Topsham is twisted and sheared from its anchors as the great flood rips through her steel suspension. Courtesy of the Maine Historical Society
The Swinging Bridge, just a thousand yards down river, was submerged in the torrent and had her cables stressed beyond limits and torn from their anchors. The deck and the cables of the pedestrian span soon twisted and sheared away.
On Water Street, just below Narcissa’s Hill, residents were evacuated as their homes along the river’s edge were swallowed up by a raging tide of frigid water. Telephone services in the towns were knocked out, and firefighters were using their apparatus to pump out commercial and residential basements and to feed the town’s water mains at Mere Point.
At the Cabot Mill, “tons of cordwood piled through the windows and smashed about inside the basement rooms of the mill.” “Pulp wood and debris smashed through the flood gates of the dam.” And one small house, just below the dam, “took the full rush of water” and withstood the destructive torrents “as water gushed from the chimney.”
Meanwhile, as Mill Street was engulfed, life was begun. Mrs. Emilliene Racine had gone into labor and her newborn son was delivered in her home, before “mother and baby were soon removed by boat.” The “flood baby” was given the biblical name of Moses.
The tally of death in the United States rose upwards of 200 persons killed, while five of those deaths were recorded in Maine. Over $25 million in losses had stricken the state, while the American Red Cross, Maine National Guard and local agencies all struggled to deliver aid to more than “260,000 homeless.”
Today, the “Great Flood of 1936” is remembered as one of the most devastating and deadly in American history and one of the most destructive of our Stories from Maine.
Lori-Suzanne Dell is a Brunswick author and historian. She has published four books and runs the “Stories from Maine” Facebook page.