Bowerbank, located on Sebec Lake,
six miles north of Dover-Foxcroft, has been the distinction of being Maine’s
smallest town – population: nineteen adults, three school-age children, and
one baby. There are plantations in Aroostook and Penobscot Counties with fewer
residents, but a plantation is not an organized town. Bowerbank was first
incorporated as a town in 1839. Thirty years later, that status was repealed by
the legislature because there were more paupers than voters. The community was
reorganized as a plantation in 1888 and officially incorporated as a town in
1907.
Eleven of the town’s nineteen
adults are town officers, some holding several position. Politically, the town,
in the last state election, gave seven votes each to Democrat Joseph Brennan and
Republican Linwood Palmer, and three Independent Buddy Frankland, but cast
fifteen votes for Republican Bill Cohen to only one for Democrat Bill Hathaway.
Despite its small size, Bowerbank
is financially well off. Of the town’s 26,000 acres, 24,000 are owned by the
J.M. Huber Corporation of Portland, which among other services furnishes the
town with a dump. There are also 230 summer cottages along Bowerbank’s portion
of Sebec Lake. Neither Huber, a timberlands company, nor the summer residents
place any great demand on town services, but they all pay taxes.
It took Bowerbank quite a while to
convince the Department of Transportation to put the town on the Maine Map, But
it now has a dot. And the latest issue of the Dover-Foxcroft telephone directory
finally included listings for every single one of the town’s telephones.
Yes, there’s no place in Maine
quite like Bowerbank. As Linwood Smith (selectman, road commissioner, and
constable) told a Portland newsman who visited the town: “No fights, no
pollution, and no one on welfare. We get along great.”
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Downeast Magazine