WILLOW CREEK — The paving of Route 11 through Willow Creek, a project five years in the making, was completed last week, and with it came the first scheduled passenger bus service in the town’s history — a development that the Gazette’s editor describes as “the greatest improvement in transportation since the railroad arrived in 1890.”
The paving project, funded by the 1916 state road improvement bond, covers the full twelve-mile stretch from the Pottersville town line to the Willow River bridge at the northern edge of town. The road is now a uniform eighteen feet wide, surfaced with crushed stone bound with tar, and graded to shed rainwater into newly dug drainage ditches on either side.
For residents who remember the Route 11 of their childhood — a wagon track that turned to impassable mud each spring and required chains on wagon wheels to navigate — the transformation is remarkable.
“My father used to say that going to Bangor in April was an act of faith, not of travel,” said Elias Homan, whose family has farmed the land around Homan’s Pond since 1869. “The mud on that road would swallow a buggy wheel to the hub. You planned your spring trips around the thaw, not in spite of it.”
The new bus service, operated by the Penobscot Valley Transportation Company, will make two daily stops in Willow Creek — one at the General Store at 9:15 AM on the southbound run to Bangor, and one at 4:30 PM on the northbound run to Houlton. The fare to Bangor is $1.85; to Houlton, 65 cents. Tickets are available at the General Store.
Seamus O’Donnell, who will serve as the local ticket agent, has installed a small sign in his front window advertising the bus schedule. “I expect this will bring more people through the door,” he said. “A man waiting for the bus is a man who might buy a cup of coffee and a newspaper.”
The Gazette welcomes the development with an editorial note: “The good road and the bus are not luxuries. They are the sinews of a modern town. Willow Creek is no longer an island reached only by rail and determination. The world has come a little closer, and that is all to the good.”