FORT FAIRFIELD JOURNAL 

Frontier Heritage Historical Society

Fort Fairfield, Maine 04742

Heritage Lane is the new name for the road meandering through the Frontier Heritage Historical Society’s railroad museum on Depot Street. The name, Heritage Lane was approved by FHHS board members at their October meeting for the purposes of 9/11 and town maps.

A photo gallery of the former Reynolds Machine Shop was recently assembled by Bill Findlen for the Frontier Heritage Historical Society and put on display at Heritage Lane this past summer.

“About twenty years ago I decided to take some pictures of the potato handling equipment made at Reynolds Machine Shop in order to archive them for future reference,” said Findlen. “Six years ago the Fort Fairfield Lions club donated enough money to have the photos enlarged and put in frames.”

The photos, which are currently on display at Heritage Lane were viewed by members of the Reynolds family during this year’s Potato Blossom Festival.

Reynolds Machine shop built potato handling equipment, made their own rubber products, brushes, sizers and grapples. “There were a lot of companies making barrel grapples back then, but the Reynolds design was the best. We have a copy of the patent for the Reynolds grapple on display at Heritage Lane,” Findlen said.

The Frontier Heritage Historical Society is busy planning for next year’s events.

“We would like to start a ‘Heritage Sunday’ next spring, where every Sunday afternoon all of the railroad museum buildings are open for the public to enjoy.” Currently, the oldest still-standing one room Black/McIntosh school house is located at the site, along with the old CP Railroad building, a retired locomotive, several rail cars and a dining car. The town of Fort Fairfield owns eight miles of railroad track and will soon reacquire insurance for passenger cars on that section of line, enabling the FHHS to potentially offer rail car rides again in the future.

Plans are in motion for moving Romie Haines’ sawmill to the site and a pole barn is scheduled to be built next summer to house it. The saw mill is planned to be a functioning display item, along with the fully functioning dining car.

The one-room school house has been completely refurbished and repainted. Students desks from the era which have been in storage for quite some time are being refurbished by the Fort Fairfield Middle School shop class students and will be placed in the school upon completion.

Frontier Heritage Historical Society currently owns manages the property at Heritage Lane, which includes the school house, CP station, dining car, an antique equipment storage/photo gallery building and locomotive with box cars. FHHS also owns and manages the Fort Fairfield Blockhouse museum on Main street and Friend’s church on Route 1. Originally a Quaker church built by the Haines family, Friends Church is the oldest still-standing church building in Fort Fairfield.