WILLOW CREEK — A fire of undetermined origin destroyed an abandoned storage shed on the property of the former Willow Creek Hardwood Flooring Company on Christmas Eve, drawing every available firefighter in town to River Road.
The fire, reported at approximately 11:30 PM by a passerby on the Route 11 bridge, consumed the 40-by-60-foot wooden structure in less than an hour. Fire Chief Dale Fournier Sr. credited the quick response of volunteer firefighters and favorable wind conditions with preventing the blaze from spreading to the main mill building, which has stood empty since 1972.
“Another twenty minutes and we would have been fighting a structure fire on the main building,” Fournier said. “That building is a tinderbox — all dry timber and sawdust in the crevices. We got lucky.”
The fire has reignited debate about the future of the mill property. The main building — a four-story timber-frame structure with a sawtooth roof and the original 1903 steam-powered planer still bolted to its concrete pad — is one of the few intact examples of early twentieth-century industrial architecture in southern Aroostook County.
Jed Thorne, who photographed the fire from his home on River Road, noted the symbolic weight of the event. “That mill built this town for seventy years,” he said. “Eleven years after it closed, it is still standing, still waiting for someone to decide what to do with it.”