Railroad Water Tower Became A Camp
Before 1941, the unique cylindrical camp on the east shore of McGrath Pond was a wooden water tower. It supplied water for the Somerset Railroad and Maine Central Railroad steam locomotives in Oakland. Trains would come in from Waterville and Augusta carrying passengers and freight. They took on water from the water tower located by the tracks near Pleasant Street. A turn table in the rail yard turned the steam engine around 180 degrees. Loaded freight cars were attached and the trains transported the products of Oakland’s factories north and south.
Camp owner Bob Plummer says his grandfather Merton Leach thought the water tower would make a fine camp. He was carpentry foreman at Oakland’s North Wayne Tool Company, which produced scythes and axes. Merton lived in the yellow house still adjacent to the train tracks on Pleasant Street. He could always be seen wearing a railroad engineer’s cap.
With the help of Charlie Blaisdell, who built the camp next door to the former water tower, Merton Leach took the water tower apart, moved and reassembled it, and added a kitchen, a porch and an upper level. He sold the three iron bands that held it together for scrap metal, needed during the war.
Bob Plummer spent many summers on McGrath Pond visiting his grandparents. Grandmother Marion Leach was Oakland’s librarian for many years. Bob remembers waiting every afternoon for camp neighbor Charlie Blaisdell to finish his postmaster’s duties and return to camp when they would go fishing. The “dance of the white perch” was a sight to see. A school of perch would rise to the surface, probably feasting on the giant mayflies of an early July hex hatch. The fish frothed the water like they were dancing, making them easy to catch.
-Joyce Ray, with thanks to Bob Plummer, Don Mairs,
and the McCartney House Museum staff