3 Things I Never Knew About Bangor, Maine

There are some pretty cool facts about Bangor that many people know.

It's the home of a massive Paul Bunyan statue.

It's the home of Stephen King's house (even if he doesn't live in it anymore).

It was once the Lumber Capital of the World.

Bangor suffered from a massive fire in 1911 that destroyed many downtown buildings.

Famous gangster Al Brady was shot and killed in the streets of downtown Bangor in 1937 by the FBI.

Many of these facts are either common knowledge or are known to people from local history lessons.

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But as someone who has spent most of her life in the Bangor area, there were a few things I learned about Bangor recently that I had never known before. So I figured I'd share them with you so that you could know, too!

Bangor used to flood... badly!

In the 1800s, Bangor was severely flooded several times due to ice jams that would form in the Penobscot River.

According to one online source:

"In 1807, an ice jam formed below Bangor Village, raising the water 10 to 12 feet (3 to 3.7 m) above the normal highwater mark, and in 1887, the freshet caused the Maine Central Railroad Company rails between Bangor and Vanceboro to be covered to a depth of several feet. Bangor's worst ice jam floods occurred in 1846 and 1902. Both resulted from mid-December freshets that cleared the upper river of ice, followed by cold that produced large volumes of frazil ice or slush, which was carried by high flows forming a major ice jam in the lower river."

These floods, while thankfully not deadly, did cause costly damage to the downtown area. So in the 1940s, the U.S. Coast Guard started using boats to break up the ice along the Penobscot to prevent flooding.

It's still something that takes place today, with Coast Guard Cutters making yearly appearances along the river to break up a path for the ice to melt.

Bangor is home to the 2nd oldest "Garden Cemetery" in the country.

Modeled after the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Boston, which was the first garden cemetery built in the U.S., Bangor's Mount Hope Cemetery started as 50 acres and has grown to over 300 acres now.

One source says the cemetery was created in the year that Bangor was incorporated as a City, back in 1834.

"It was designed by architect Charles G. Bryant in 1834 and built by the Bangor Horticultural Society soon after, the same year that Bangor was incorporated as a city. The cemetery was modeled after Mount Auburn Cemetery (1831) in Boston, Massachusetts. Bangor was at that time a frontier boom-town, and much of its architecture and landscaping was modeled after that of Boston."

It's now a popular spot for folks to go walking.

A Brewer native created 3 bronze statues that sit in different spots within Bangor.

Charles Eugene Teft, known to his friends as Carl, was born in Brewer in 1874. He went on to study sculpture in an art school in New York City, ultimately going on to teach at the same institution.

According to one website, he's responsible for many sculptures, not the least of which are Lady Victory, who stands tall in the Norumbega Parkway.

The Pierce Memorial "Penobscot River Log-Drivers" that resides next to the Bangor Public Library...

...and another famous statue that has a twin located in Washington.

"His statue of Hannibal Hamlin is one of Maine's two statues in the National Statuary Hall Collection located in the US Capitol in Washington, D.C. A second Tefft statue of Hamlin stands in Norumbega Mall (a public park) in downtown Bangor, Maine."

Teft had a studio in New York, then moved to Guilford, Maine. He passed away in Presque Isle in 1951.

While I grew up in Bangor, these were things I didn't know, but do now. What other fun facts about the Queen City do you think others might not know? Feel free to share them!