Remembering Bangor : The Queen City Before the Great Fire

On April 30, 1911, a fire ignited in Frank Green's hay shed that changed the city of Bangor forever. From the ashes of the Great Fire, the logging and mill town emerged as a modernized metropolis. In this collection of retrospective articles, Wayne E. Reilly takes a look at the town of Bangor in the years before the fire, when illegal barrooms and brothels were as rampant as the outbreaks of typhoid and smallpox. He explores Bangor in its boomtown days, when ice harvesting and logging were thriving industries, steamboats ferried passengers between cities and a lively theatre scene drew audiences to see the 'little Broadway in the Great North Woods.' One look through this vibrant window into the past will leave you with your nose pressed to the glass, nostalgic for the olden days of Maine's Queen City.