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Working The Bay:
Nineteenth Century Industries: Lime |
Resources, labor, and markets linked many Penobscot Bay industries to each other. The lime industry, based on a narrow 3-mile long band running from Thomaston to Camden, depended on wood—to fire the kilns and to build casks for the finished lime, used in plasterand mortar.
Limestone was found early in the colonial period, but was first made into lime commercially in 1733 in Thomaston. In 1836, the area produced 700,000 casks; in 1869, Rockland alone produced more than 1.1 million casks of lime. The industry peaked in 1892, when more than 1.4 million casks were produced in Rockland.
Limestone (calcium carbonate) is a sedimentary rock formed from the calcified remains of ancient marine animals. When burned, it produces lime (calcium oxide) and carbon dioxide. Kilns, 28 to 36 feet high and eight feet in diameter, used wood or coal to burn limestone. In the nineteenth century, Knox County’s kilns were primarily wood fired. A kiln was loaded with a cord of wood at the bottom, and then filled with limestone broken into head-sized pieces. Lime was taken from the kiln and loaded into casks. A typical kiln produced 20,000 casks of lime and used 1,000 cords of wood annually. Advances in kiln design allowed them to work continuously. In 1890, Rockland had sixty-eight of the ninety-six kilns in Knox County. To cut the animal and human labor needed to move limestone from quarry to kiln, the Limerock Railroad was built in1890 in Rockland and Rockport. Trains ran on trestles, so that limestone could be dumped into the top of the kilns.
By the 1880’s most of the kilnwood needed was imported from the St. John, New Brunswick area. Nicknamed Johnny Wood Boats, dozens of small Canadian schooners entered Rockland and Rockport. This trade eventually declined due to cordwood carried by railroad from Maine’s interior and the gradual conversion from wood to coal starting in the 1890s.
Larger lime companies owned schooners that carried filled casks to Boston or New York. Lime was a dangerous cargo: if it got wet, a chemical reaction created heat and sometimes caused the schooner to catch fire. Water could not put it out; the only way to save the vessel was by smothering the fire.
Lime was put into barrels or casks made by coopers. Hundreds of thousands of spruce casks were needed each year. Coopers made both complete casks and shooks, or disassembled barrels.
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Rockland’s lime industry faltered after the turn of the century, due to competition from new building materials, lime from other places and higher costs. Despite consolidating the independent quarry businesses, Rockland’s kilns slowly began to close, and by 1950 were completely gone. Rockland’s lime businesses survived until then because new markets opened in the papermaking industry, in agriculture, and in making cement. Today, neighboring Thomaston’s Dragon Cement Plant, built in 1928, uses local lime. It is the largest cement plant in New England, and ships its products by barge through Rockland.
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