Western Wednesday: Ghost Towns…of the East?

Mention ghost towns and most folks will immediately think of the West, tumbleweeds tumbling across dry dusty streets embedded with the iron tire tracks of a hundred years’ past, dilapidated saloons and maybe the haunting moan of a gunned-down Pistolero at High Noon.

But the West doesn’t have the patent on ghost towns. No sirree. Some exist in the great North East, in my home state of Maine.

As a matter of fact, we even have a town named Flagstaff, in Somerset County, on the ghost town list. Perhaps this is why a number of Western writers, including myself, hail from Maine.

Benedict Arnold’s forces erected Flagstaff in 1775, while attempting to invade Quebec. The town remained until the 1940s, when the local power company decided to flood the Dead River for construction of a dam, forcing all residents to leave, with the exception, legend has it, of an elderly dweller who refused to move. His ghost was said to haunt the town thereafter.

There are other ghost towns here in Maine, such as Oriental Powder Mills, Riceville and Dead River, each with their own tale of spookiness and history. There are no tumbleweeds or gunfighter spooks, but there are dilapidated buildings and the sense of emptiness that accompanies the ghost towns of the West. If you listen close you might even hear the echoing hoofbeats of a spectral horse…