From A Short History of Otisfield
By Jean & David Hankins
With the arrival of the twentieth century, Otisfield began to change at a faster rate. The most obvious changes were technological. In 1903 the Oxford and Otisfield Telephone Company began constructing the first telephone lines in town. In 1909, Nellie Pottle and her classmates saw their first automobile, driven by Dr.Orin Stevens of Oxford, come chugging past Pugleyville School. By 1926 there was enough automobile traffic to prompt the town to replace its snow roller with a truck-driven plow. During the 1930s, lines bearing electric power spread through the town, brightening lives and lightening everyone’s workload.
Other changes were more subtle, particularly the change in how people in Otisfield earned a living.Starting in the second part of the nineteenth century, Otisfield, like other southern Maine towns, suffered a steady decline in agricultural production and income. So many left for better opportunities in the Midwest that the population of Maine’s cities and towns fell precipitously. Otisfield was no exception. From a peak of 1,307 in 1840 the population declined over a hundred years to only 488 in 1940. It may have been coincidental that the town’s poor farm, first opened in 1865, shut down in 1924 partly because it had no residents.
From 1910 to 1920 especially, a considerable number of families of Finnish background arrived in town, in many cases buying up the old farms which the earlier settlers had given up on. Hard-working families named Heikkinen, Tikkanen, and Jaakkola settled on Bell Hill. They brought not only new blood into town but also new customs, traditions, and such novelties as saunas and skis. At the end of the twentieth century, the Finnish heritage remains an important element in Otisfield.
About 1920, at the same time that sawmills and farming were waning, the advent of the automobile helped create new opportunities for profit making———tourism and real estate. A number of children’s camps opened on Otisfield’s three major lakes: Ohuivo, Wacipi Pines, and Wayaka on Thompson Lake; Great Oaks on Saturday Pond; Powhatan, Truda, and Arcadia on Pleasant Pond. The camps flourished from 1925 into the 1960s. Most now have been closed and sold off as individual building lots. Arcadia, however, continues to flourish, and Powhatan has gained a new life as Seeds of Peace Camp. The rapid development of shore property for summer cottages and second homes, begun in the 1920s and 30s, continues unabated today.
World War II served as a watershed for Otisfield. During the war many young people from town served in the armed forces, some never to return. Others found work in Maine’s booming shipyards. Since 1945 the town’s population has turned around and shown steady growth, rising to 1,136 by 1990. Modern roads and automobiles have allowed residents to take advantage of country living while commuting to neighboring towns and cities for work. Otisfield is no longer a farming community; on the other hand, it has maintained a strong rural character. Since World War II particularly, the town has attracted not just vacationing visitors but individuals and families who enjoy outdoor activities, hunting in the fall, snowmobiling and ice fishing in the winter, and water sports in the summer.
As the twentieth century is about to give way to the twenty-first, Otisfield is no longer the wilderness that George Peirce found in 1775. Neither is it any more the collection of distinct villages that it was in the last century. Industry has moved out of town, leaving Otisfield without a post office or business center except for the one small year~round store in Bolsters Mills. On the other hand, technological changes and changes in the town’s population and economy have tended to unify the town and lend it a singular character. Newcomers to the town still remark, with pleasure, about one aspect of Otisfield that has remained the same for two centuries, its form of government. Otisfield citizens still gather together at a town meeting every spring to elect three selectmen and to conduct the town’s business, just as they first did in May of 1787. One recent political change shows how seriously Otisfielders take their political responsibilities. In 1978, led by Albert Willis, the townspeople staged a rebellion possibly inspired by America’s revolt from England two centuries before. Otisfield objected to being taxed to pay for Cumberland County’s new civic center in Portland. It was, they felt, simply a device on Portland’s part to pass the tax burden on to towns which would not benefit. Richard Bean flatly declared, “We will secede.” And so they did. Eventually, with the blessing of Oxford County, the Maine legislature passed an act enabling Otisfield to withdraw from Cumberland and join Oxford County. Otisfield’s victory was complete.
Doubtless more great events of this kind will occur in the twenty-first century, transforming Otisfield in ways we cannot even guess. Whatever these changes are, let us hope that the town will always remember its history. It is Otisfield’s past, after all, that is responsible for what it is today. A small town with pride in its natural surroundings, its relaxed way of life, and its tradition of independence. George Peirce would approve of what has become of his wilderness.
lnformation Sources
Centennial History of Harrison (1905); Ioan C. Madden and Margaret E. Slattery, The Thompson Lake Book (1991 ); William S. Spurr, A History of Otisfield, Maine (1950); T_he Town Register: Otisfield, Harrison, Naples and Sebago_ (1906); George B. Turner, Early Days of Otisfield (1939); Otisfield Town Records; US. Census, Cumberland County, various years; unpublished papers by ]ohn E. Hankins, Nellie Pottle Hankins, and Helen Brett (Otisfield Historical Society); interviews with Helen Jaakkola, Mary Carlson, and officials at the Maine State Grange.