These Bangor streets finish in a single spot, then restart someplace else
This story was initially revealed in March 2021.
It’s not an uncommon state of affairs: A Bangor resident is giving instructions to somebody much less accustomed to town, and out of the blue is explaining that Hammond Avenue ends in a single spot, then begins once more virtually a mile away.
Generally you would possibly even have to elucidate that there’s one other Hammond Avenue, which juts off the second Hammond Avenue, and ends subsequent to an outdated cemetery.
It’s not the one instance of a Bangor road with a seemingly nonsensical cease and restart. When you’re not already accustomed to this, it could appear totally inexplicable. However there are causes for these visitors patterns, and a few of them are as attention-grabbing because the bizarre streets themselves.
Hammond and Outer Hammond streets
As we already talked about, it has lengthy puzzled drivers in Bangor as to why Hammond Avenue ends after which begins once more a couple of mile later. The rationale has to do with the Chilly Battle-era enlargement of Dow Air Power Base, the army set up that was the precursor to Bangor Worldwide Airport.
Earlier than 1956, Hammond Avenue prolonged out in a straight, roughly four-mile shot from downtown Bangor to the Bangor-Hermon city line. In 1956, nonetheless, the U.S. Air Power determined to broaden the runway at Dow Air Power Base to accommodate the then-new B-52 Stratofortress, a large aircraft that required an enormous quantity of runway house.
That runway enlargement minimize straight by way of a virtually mile-long stretch of Hammond Avenue, taking a number of buildings with it. To reconnect each ends of Hammond Avenue, Odlin Street was prolonged between the 2, creating what individuals within the Nineteen Fifties and 60s referred to as “the bulge” — the place the runway “bulged” into the remainder of town. That part of Odlin Street wasn’t renamed Hammond Avenue, nonetheless — it’s nonetheless, to this present day, often called Odlin Street.
Dow Air Power Base closed in 1968, and was offered to town and renamed Bangor Worldwide Airport. And a brief portion of the outdated Hammond Avenue stays, accessible by a flip throughout the road from the Ranger Inn. That small part is a little bit of a time warp, in response to Bangor historian Dick Shaw, who says you possibly can nonetheless see some remnants of pre-1956 Bangor there.
“It’s fascinating. There’s nonetheless some outdated pavement on the market, and there’s an outdated cemetery, and should you look throughout the runway, you possibly can see the place Hammond Avenue used to attach,” Shaw stated. “Some nights I’ll take a sandwich on the market and simply watch the lights.”
It’s additionally becoming that the workplaces for the Stephen and Tabitha King Basis are positioned on that little strip of outdated Hammond Avenue — a tiny highway by a cemetery, forgotten by time, that solely fixed readers would be capable of discover.
Pushaw Street
One other instance of a highway ending, then starting once more elsewhere, exists off Broadway, close to Six Mile Falls. Pushaw Street runs from Route 221 in Glenburn alongside the western shore of Pushaw Lake, earlier than ending at Broadway, additionally Route 15, in Bangor.
Besides it doesn’t technically finish. About 500 toes southwest of the intersection of Pushaw Street and Broadway is the Kenduskeag Stream. On the opposite facet of the stream, a bit over 1,000 toes away, Pushaw Street begins once more, and runs for about one other half mile earlier than ending (for actual this time) at Finson Street, close to the Capehart neighborhood.
Practically 100 years in the past, a bridge carried Pushaw Street over the Kenduskeag Stream. BDN reader and Glenburn resident Laurie Walton discovered an outdated BDN article from March 1936, detailing the fallout from a big flood that occurred that month, which washed out not simply the Dudley Bridge, which carried Pushaw Street over the Kenduskeag, but in addition the Bull’s Eye bridge, which carried Griffin Street over the stream.
Whereas the Bull’s Eye bridge was changed with the Griffin Street bridge we’re accustomed to right now, the Dudley Bridge was not, with metropolis officers stating within the 1936 article that it was “not a lot used” and that there have been “different roads to city from Six Mile Falls.” Town by no means bought round to renaming the part of Pushaw Street minimize off from the remainder of the highway, nonetheless, so the disconnected half-mile spur retains the identify — even the road numbers proceed within the right order from the opposite facet of the stream.
York Avenue and Bangor Alley
Say you have been in downtown Bangor, and also you needed to stroll from the Bangor Arts Change on Change Avenue over to West Market Sq.. Essentially the most environment friendly manner could be to stroll down York Avenue, previous the Bangor Financial savings Financial institution drive-through, over the bridge after which up the quick road often called Bangor Alley, to the sq..
Besides that, whenever you cross that bridge after which stroll behind the Charles Inn, you’re not technically on a named metropolis road. That roughly 250-foot stretch, regardless of being a public manner open to each automobiles and pedestrians, is neither York Avenue, Bangor Alley, nor close by Hancock Avenue. Based on Bangor metropolis planner Anne Krieg, it’s not named something.
The naming anomaly is sort of definitely due to the city renewal motion of the Sixties, when your complete space alongside the Kenduskeag Stream between Change Avenue and Pickering Sq. was razed and rebuilt, Krieg stated.
“The event in that period encompassed a complete metropolis block. When you take a look at the historic pictures earlier than that occurred, you’d see a lot of buildings, all with little alleys and throughways,” Krieg stated. “It very effectively could have been one thing that simply remained or bought minimize off when the brand new growth got here in.”
Regardless that a part of her job description is to grasp all of the completely different elements of town, and the way all of them match collectively, Krieg stated, there are nonetheless surprises she uncovers in her day-to-day work.
“Generally you discover these odd little locations that you just by no means knew existed, that you just uncover whenever you’re searching for one thing fully completely different,” Krieg stated. “That’s all the time loads of enjoyable.”
Correction: A earlier model of this text incorrectly said Laurie Walton’s identify.
