WILLOW CREEK — The Great New England Hurricane of 1938, which devastated coastal communities from Long Island to Portland, reached Willow Creek yesterday afternoon as a severe windstorm that toppled hundreds of trees, tore the roof from the mill’s main building, and left the town without electricity for an estimated 18 hours.
The storm arrived without warning. Although the Bangor weather bureau had issued advisories for coastal areas, no one in Willow Creek expected the hurricane to retain its force as it moved inland. By the time the wind shifted to the northwest and began howling down the Willow River valley at what mill manager Frank Bouchard estimated as “a hundred miles an hour, perhaps more,” it was too late to do anything but take cover.
The mill suffered the most severe damage. The roof of the main building — a 40,000-square-foot structure roofed with corrugated metal — was peeled back from the north end like the lid of a sardine can. Rain poured into the planing department, soaking a week’s worth of finished flooring. The saw carriage, the heart of the mill’s operation, was protected by a concrete roof that held, but the drying kilns — built of wood — were heavily damaged.
“We were lucky that no one was killed,” said Bouchard, who had ordered the mill evacuated when the wind reached gale force. “The roof came down at 2:30 in the afternoon. If we had kept the men working, we might have lost a dozen of them.”
The storm toppled white pines and hemlocks across every road leading into Willow Creek. Route 11 was blocked in three places by fallen trees. The Bangor & Aroostook rail line was blocked by a slide of timber and mud near Thorne’s Bend. The town was effectively cut off for the better part of a day.
Ezra Homan, who walked the pond at first light this morning to assess the damage, reported that the ice — it is September, too early for the pond to freeze — was undisturbed but that the shoreline was littered with branches and debris. “The pond is fine,” he said. “The pond has seen worse.”
The Gazette will publish a special storm edition with photographs of the damage on Main Street. The mill will be closed for an estimated three weeks for repairs. In the meantime, the town will rely on kerosene lamps and wood stoves, as the power is not expected to be restored until the weekend.
“We have been through hard winters, hard times, and hard luck,” Arthur Whitcomb writes in the storm edition. “We have never been through a hurricane before. But we are still standing — bruised, soaked, and battered, but still standing.”