WILLOW CREEK — The Willow Creek Hardwood Flooring Company has added a night shift, increasing the mill’s workforce to 130 men, the highest employment level since the mill opened in 1903.
The mill now runs two eight-hour shifts with the steam planer running almost continuously. The night shift operates under new electric arc lights powered by a dynamo driven by the mill race’s water turbine.
“The night shift changes everything,” said mill manager Jeremiah Collins. “We can now produce nearly twice the flooring we did last year. Every board foot will go south on the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad.”
The railroad has responded by adding a second daily freight train to the Willow Creek schedule. Where once Thorne & Sons Shipworks launched a vessel or two per year, the mill now ships two freight cars of finished flooring every day, a volume that would have seemed impossible in the year the Lydia Barnes was launched.
Ezra Homan, now twenty-two and promoted from the green chain to the planer department, is among the volunteers for the new night shift. “The pay is better,” he said, “and the work is the same, day or night. The sawdust does not care what time it is.”