Keyth Carter, who lives in Moosehead's most populated town of Greenville (where she was a schoolteacher for 35 years) is the granddaughter of Stillman Sawyer, a boat captain and builder of the steamboat era. Stillman's wife, Bertie, kept a detailed diary of those times. On 8 April 1935, Bertie wrote: "Stillman got word he was released from the mail contracts so no more boats. I am feeling sad about it."
"Every time I read this entry, I pause and think about the worry and stress she must have felt for their future," said Carter. "Stillman's life, their family's life, had everything to do with the business of running boats on Moosehead Lake. What would they do now without the business of the mail contracts? Now that the road to Rockwood was completed, would people still need the services of the passenger boats to transport them or their supplies up the lake?"
Between the 1940s and '70s, the steamboats indeed met their end. Some vessels were salvaged for parts and one was accidentally wrecked, but many were scuttled in Moosehead Lake when owners realised they were consuming more time, space and money than they were worth.
The last one left was the Steamboat Katahdin, which had started ferrying passengers in 1915 and which closed out the US logging era in the
nation's last log drive in 1975, helping to transport timber down the Kennebec River off Moosehead Lake. "The Kate", as she's affectionately known, was initially destined to be scuttled too, until a group of local citizens organised to have her donated to
Moosehead Marine Museum, where she was
placed on the National Register of Historic Places and now
offers a variety of public cruises daily from late June to mid-October.
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