City: Alt. 1030, pop. 20,018, sett. 1821, incorp. 1897.
Railroad Stations: B. & M. R.R., Mason St.; Grand Trunk R.R., Exchange St.
Bus Stations: Maine and N.H. Stages, Berlin House, Green Sq.; Greyhound Bus Line and Costello Bus Line, Costello Hotel, Green Sq.
Taxis: 50¢ within the city.
Accommodations: Three hotels.
Information Service: Chamber of Commerce, City Hall.
Swimming: Pool at the Y.M.C.A. field; Berlin Mills Swimming Pool, Upper Main St.
Annual Events: Berlin Winter Carnival, February; Androscoggin Valley Fish and Game Club Field Day; White Mountain Sportsmen’s Club Field Day; Feast of St. John the Baptist, June 24.
BERLIN, a city of smoking factories, lies in a valley at the confluence of the Dead and Androscoggin Rivers at the northern edge of the White Mountains, and is surrounded by rugged hills. A mile of huge brick mills lines the western bank near the falls. Above them loom tall, scattered stacks and steel devices for handling pulpwood and other materials. Brick business blocks and frame tenements are crowded together along the Main Street, while modest frame houses line the streets that run from it up toward Mt. Forist.
The Androscoggin, rising in Umbagog Lake, furnishes the only outlet of that chain of water, and receives in addition the drainage of the Magalloway, the Swift and Dead Diamond Rivers, Clear Stream, and many others. This large flow of water is compressed at Berlin between narrow walls of rock and pours over a succession of rapids and abrupt cataracts with tremendous force, falling about four hundred feet in six miles, and furnishing one of the greatest power sites in New England.
As a result of its natural resources, the town has long known the whine of the whirling saw, and the tremendous churning of logs when the ice goes out on the river. From the town, lumberjacks used to trudge into the woods, toting fifty-gallon pots of frozen mush and returning with tall stories of timber and bears. Although many of the more picturesque aspects of its life disappeared with the coming of modern methods of lumbering, the city still depends for its livelihood on the saw and the river.
The combination of mills and encircling mountains makes the city important in both industrial and sporting life. Here are made many of the products that the world uses: newsprint, napkins, towels, bags, and artificial leather, and enough paper each year to make a road fifteen feet wide that would run nineteen times around the world. Around Berlin is some of the wildest hunting ground in New Hampshire, with bear, deer, and moose, and a variety of small game birds. The severe winters mean winter sports, and the annual carnival of the Nansen Ski and Outing Club, the oldest skiing club in the United States, founded more than fifty years ago, draws thousands each year. In addition to the usual skiing events and the sixteen-mile sled dog race, there are loggers’ contests in sawing and chopping that help to perpetuate the skill of the old lumbermen.
Near to the Canadian border, it is natural that the population of the city should be largely of French descent. The annual Feast of Saint John the Baptist, patron saint of the French-Canadians, is observed by religious processions in the main streets of the city and by special services in the three French Catholic churches. The French people brought many of the Canadian sports with them, and the citizens of Berlin played ice-hockey long before the game became popular elsewhere. Besides the French-Canadian population, there is a large group of Norwegians that founded the Nansen Ski and Outing Club. Russians and Jews add to the racial mixture. Services in the thirteen churches are read in five different languages. For a long time the divisions between these races were very distinct, with the result that the city was divided into several districts known as ‘Little Canada,’ ‘Irish Acre,’ ‘German Town,’ and ‘Norwegian Village.’ Only in recent years has there been much intermingling of these groups.
The intellectual development of the city has not been stunted by its industry. A fine school system is adequately backed by a Carnegie Library with an annual circulation of 90,000 volumes. A local weekly newspaper, the Berlin Reporter, circulates throughout Coos County. Several novels and volumes of verse have Berlin as their background. Herbert Goss’ ‘T. Thorndyke, Attorney-at-Law,’ deals with local business and professional men of the 1880’s, and Thomas Littlefield Marble’s ‘Product of the Mills’ uses the paper mills for its locale.
Berlin has always had choral societies and orchestras. The chief musical organization in the city is the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, established in 1926, financed and directed by Dr. E. R. B. McGee, a former mayor. The orchestra of fifty members gives concerts each winter.
The municipal government has the distinction of being the only Farmer-Labor government in the East. The industries of Berlin long dominated city politics, and the present government (1937) is the result of dissatisfaction among the workingmen and the small business men. The Farmer-Labor Party is influential throughout Coos County.
For many years before the white men’s advent, the American Indians, more particularly the St. Francis and Penobscot tribes, passed down the fertile valley of the Androscoggin to eastern points.
In the late 1760’s plantation fines were run in this vicinity, but it was not until the last day of 1771 that the New Hampshire Assembly granted a charter to Sir William Mayne and others under the name of Maynesborough.
The settlement contemplated in the charter was never made, nor was it attempted until the early 1800’s. For many years the forest wilds were invaded only by the hunter or trapper, or in later times along the Androscoggin, by the lumberman, who found in its richly wooded river banks a treasure easily transported by the river highway to the settlements in Maine. Through Berlin occasional bands of Indians passed to descend upon the early settlers of Gilead and Bethel, and return with their captives on the way to their Canadian homes. Except for these occasional visitors the town remained an unbroken wilderness until 1802, when the Massachusetts proprietors sent two surveyors to explore the tract. In 1821 a few adventurous spirits from points down the Androscoggin River, among them William Sessions, settled in the rich meadows of the Maynesborough intervale. Seven families resident in the region, wresting a bare existence from unwilling Nature, on July 1, 1829, were granted a legislative charter and adopted the name Berlin.
Although the first few settlers were farmers, the tillable land proved very scarce, and the later prosperity of the city was due to its proximity to miles of encircling forests and the Androscoggin River.
The first logging camp was erected about 1825 by Thomas Lary and Thomas Green. Soon thereafter Berlin’s prosperity began. Virgin timber of huge dimensions was cut, and it is related that in one day 40,000 feet of pine logs were placed on the ice with the use of one four-ox team.
Soon after the first of Berlin’s ‘little mills’ began turning logs into lumber, and in the growth of one of them was the beginning of the Brown Company, the city’s dominant enterprise.
The rise of the mills greatly increased the population of the little town, bringing in many French-Canadians and Norwegians, until by 1897 it had 8000 people and was incorporated into a city. In thirty years, the population doubled, reaching its present number of 20,000.
POINTS OF INTEREST
The Brown Paper Company (open on permission at the office), a long range of brick mills by the river, acquired its name during the World War, when the supposed German connection of its earlier name, the Berlin Mills, drove away most of its business. It now operates two wood-pulp mills with a combined capacity of about 400 tons, two paper mills with a capacity of about 200 tons, chemical plants, an artificial leather plant, a wood-fiber string plant, and a bituminized fiber conduit plant. In addition, the company operates hundreds of square miles of woodlands in New Hampshire, Maine, and Canada.
The foundations of the company were laid in 1852 when a group of Portland, Maine, business men, J. B. Brown, Josiah S. Little, Nathan Winslow, and Hezekiah Winslow, formed a partnership under the firm name of H. Winslow and Company to engage in the lumber business.
The name of Berlin Mills Company, which prevailed for half a century, and is now perpetuated by use of the word ‘Bermico’ as a trade name for some products, dates from 1866, when it was adopted by the partners. In 1868, William Wentworth Brown purchased the interest of J. B. Brown, and thus started the present line of control.
To meet competition from foreign producers, the company organized in 1913 an industrial research department, gradually expanding the work by recruiting young scientists from leading eastern universities. A great many avenues have been explored. At first the emphasis was placed on chemical specialties such as chloroform, carbon tetrachloride, and hydrogenated vegetable oil for use as cooking fat. After the World War, attention was largely directed to wood pulps and their conversion into lacquers, explosives, plastics, and artificial silks. As a result the company owns 600 patents and is rapidly changing the whole wood-pulp industry.
The depression of 1929 severely injured this company, and for a time it seemed as if the city would follow it into bankruptcy. The State government, faced with the possibility of having a bankrupt city on its hands, endorsed the city’s notes, and so enabled the company to rehabilitate itself.
West on Mt. Forist St., 0.5 m., and on a high elevation is the Russian Church, a white frame structure surmounted by a low tower topped with a large onion-shaped dome, and flanked by four smaller towers with similar domes. Above the front gable a separate tower has the same type of dome. All the six domes have the patriarchal cross above them.
Points of Interest in the Environs:
Ski Jump, 1.5 m. N.; Nansen Ski and Outing Club Hut, 2 m. N.; Jasper Cave, 2 m. NW.; Cates Hill, 2 m. W.; Mt. Forist, 2 m. N.; Black Mountain, 3 m. SW.; Maynesborough Game Sanctuary, 4 m. N. (see Tour 2, sec. d), York Pond Fisheries and State Game Refuge, 8 m. N. (see Tour 6).