WILLOW CREEK — The great blizzard of January 19-20, which dropped thirty-six inches of snow on Willow Creek and drifted to depths of eight feet in the hollows, has left the town digging out from the worst storm since the winter of 1857.

Main Street buried under a record-breaking snowfall, with residents digging out after the worst winter storm to hit northern Maine in decades.
Main Street buried under a record-breaking snowfall, with residents digging out after the worst winter storm to hit northern Maine in decades.

The weekly mail delivery from Houlton, normally arriving by wagon on Wednesday, was delayed by eight full days. The road between here and Island Falls remained impassable until yesterday, when a crew of twelve men with shovels and a team of oxen finally cleared the worst drifts. The Gazette’s edition is three days late.

But the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad kept running throughout. A snowplow mounted on the front of a freight locomotive pushed through drifts that reached the top of the boiler, and the evening train from Bangor arrived on schedule each day.

“They have their steam and their iron,” observed Ezra Thorne II, the eldest son of William Thorne, who spent his youth at Thorne & Sons Shipworks. “The old Thorne sloops could not have moved through this snow. But a locomotive can push through anything short of a mountain. That is the difference between the old ways and the new.”

The storm’s only casualty was a barn roof on the Thorne property that collapsed under the weight of the snow. A subscription fund has been opened at the Gazette office to help the family.