WILLOW CREEK — The outbreak of war in Europe has begun to affect Willow Creek. The Willow Creek Hardwood Flooring Company announced this week that it is reducing operating hours in response to declining orders from export markets, particularly British and French buyers who have been significant customers for Maine hardwood.
The mill, which had been running two shifts at peak capacity, will reduce to a single eight-hour shift effective next Monday. Approximately forty men will be laid off indefinitely.
“The effects of the European war, though distant, have reached the banks of the Willow River,” writes Gazette editor Walter Dinsmore. “The same railroad that brought prosperity to this town now carries news of its uncertainty.”
The mill’s reduced output means fewer freight cars moving on the Bangor & Aroostook line. The railroad has reduced its Willow Creek service from two daily freight trains to one, a sign of the economic contraction rippling through the region.
Ezra Thorne II, now 71 and the last surviving member of the generation that built Thorne & Sons Shipworks, offered a grim observation. “My father told me the railroad would make this town’s fortune,” he said. “It did. But fortune is a wheel, and wheels turn. The war in Europe will end eventually. The question is what the town will look like when it does.”
The mill whistle now blows at seven in the morning instead of six. The second freight train sits idle on the siding.