The Railroads

Rail development transformed the county after Houlton resident Albert A. Burleigh conceived a plan to finance a new line using credit loaned directly from Aroostook County. Chartered in 1891, the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad laid tracks northward, reaching Houlton in December 1893 and running its first trains on January 1, 1894, to provide the county's first direct rail connection southward through Maine. Civil engineer Moses Burleigh, trained at the Franklin Institute, oversaw right-of-way and track development as the line expanded. Service reached Presque Isle in January 1895, and extensions were completed that same year northward to Caribou and Fort Fairfield. Before these tracks arrived, growers relied on indirect Canadian rail routes, but direct access to Boston and New York sparked massive shipments. In 1895, the railroad also introduced heated boxcars to prevent frost damage to potatoes during winter transit.

The iron network quickly branched outward to serve farms and mills across the northern border. A parallel branch was constructed from Oakfield north to Ashland in 1896, and the main line extended to Van Buren in 1899. Lines pushed to Fort Kent in 1902, where a northern station opened for passenger and freight service in 1903 at the terminus of the Fish River Railroad. Up the Saint John River, a manual turntable was built in St. Francis in 1904 to reverse locomotives at the northwestern end of the branch line. Presque Isle businessman Arthur R. Gould organized and built the electrified Aroostook Valley Railroad around 1909, tapping hydro power from Aroostook Falls to run an 11-mile corridor to Washburn starting July 1, 1910. Gould's electric venture prompted the Bangor and Aroostook to build competing branch lines, while international connections grew in 1915 when an international rail bridge was built across the Saint John River at Van Buren, connecting directly with St. Leonard, New Brunswick, and transcontinental Canadian routes.

Generations of rail history can still be traced across the region, where the railroads in Aroostook County left landmarks in almost every rail town. Oakfield Station, built in 1911 at the junction where lines branched toward Ashland and Houlton, now serves as the Oakfield Railroad Museum, preserving original equipment, a C-66 caboose, and motor cars. In Frenchville, a 50,000-gallon wooden water tank built in 1910 to service steam locomotives stands beside a station site and a 1943 caboose. Further along the line, the 1902 Fort Kent Railroad Station operates as a museum chronicling passenger travel, pulpwood, and potato transit, while the restored 1904 manual turntable in St. Francis remains preserved where locomotives once reversed. In Fort Fairfield, the Frontier Heritage Historical Society cares for the former Bangor and Aroostook yard with historic rail cars, a diesel locomotive, and a relocated Canadian Pacific railway station.