National Register of Historic Places – Listings

Photos, and edited text are from nominations to the National Register of Historic Places researched by Maine. Historic Preservation Commission.
Full text and photos are at https://npgallery.nps.gov/nrhp 

Boarding House and Storehouse at Churchill Depot

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Boarding House and Storehouse at Churchill Depot are located in  in northern Piscataquis County at YELLOW township block at left.. The two buildings are the remnants of a logging base camp around Churchill Dam on the Allagash River. The property is now part of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway. Such a communal building is central to any logging camp as combination housing, kitchen, dining hall and administrative center.

The building is an intact example of a typical boarding house design for a logging supply camp. Both the Boarding House and Storehouse are significant for their association with the logging industry as vital support buildings in the process of harvesting and moving logs to processing facilities. The period of historical significance for both begins with 1926, the construction date, and ends in 1938 when large scale logging operations based at Churchill Depot ceased.

 

From 1926 through 1938 Edouard “King” Lacroix’s Madawaska Company operated out of its headquarters at Churchill Depot, a small village situated around the Heron Lake Dam (later Churchill Dam) at the northern end of Churchill Lake. To establish the new base of operations, Lacroix built a road from Lac Frontiere, forty-five miles west on the U.S.-Canadian border. Seeking a way for this road to span the St. John River, Lacroix learned that Canadian authorities were replacing with a bridge over the Chaudierre River with a larger structure, so he bought the old bridge and moved it overland to the St. John. This bridge came to be known as “Ninemile Bridge” and though the structure is now gone, the area around it and part of the old road still bears the same name.

Source: Bureau of Parks and Lands, “Churchill Depot” https://www.maine.gov/dacf/parks/discover_history_explore_nature/history/allagash/chdepot.shtml (accessed February, 10, 2021)