Watson moved here from Massachussetts in 1980, a newly retired developer. Still, he wanted to keep busy.
The town's biggest industry, the American Thread wooden spool factory, had closed a few years earlier and Milo was not exactly bustling.
So Watson built his own industries. First he bought a wood-drying shed from American Thread for about $12,500, and inside he found a collection of old factory equipment, including a narrow gauge train engine and more than 7,000 feet of track.
The train and track were used by American Thread to cart wood around the mill yard. Watson took the drying shed, dismantled it, and built himself a three-story house.
Then he laid the train track on his property, running it through both ends of his daylight basement. In his house, on the second floor, he built a small wood-cutting room.
He then went into the cedar shingle business, cutting shingles in his home and using the train to cart wood around his property.
Over the years, Watson took advantage of the springs on his property to bottle and sell his Watson Springs Water.
He developed a 3-acre pond and a 20-site campground on his property, and he grows and sells Christmas trees as well.
At 91, Watson still runs these enterprises — with varying degrees of success, and with the help of his son, Gordon.
He doesn't cut a lot of cedar shingles anymore, so he figured he'd try to sell the American Thread train engine.
He thought since American Thread opened in town in 1902, the train might be pretty old and pretty valuable.
He put an ad in the paper asking $55,000 for the engine, 2,000 feet of track and 35 cars. And he mentioned in the ad that it was built by the Wright Brothers.
Though there's no proof this is true.
"He tells everyone that," said Watson's son, Gordon, about the Wright Brothers. Regardless of the pedigree, both Watson and his steam-powered engine are unique to Milo.
MILO TODAY
Watson seems at home in Milo, itself the epitome of a rural Maine mill town that still holds so much color from its prosperous past, even though its future prosperity is uncertain.
Milo is a place of wild beauty and rural isolation. A place that grew to be a bustling hub because of its proximity to woods, when American Thread was turning out thousands of wooden spools.
Today, without a large factory at its core, Milo attracts people who see the value of natural scenery, of room to spread out, of cheap real estate.
It attracts retirees like Watson, and people who work in Bangor but don't mind driving 45 minutes over rural roads with no traffic.
It still grows new businesses, including JSI Store Fixtures Inc., a 75-employee operation that makes retail store fixtures and has won national praise as a model small business.
It still has old, pretty homes and a park on the water (the Sebec River) downtown.
There are also 100 or more American flags decorating telephone poles all over town. The flags were supplied by Walter Lougee, a town resident and owner of World of Flags USA, along with the local American Legion post. People donated $25, and a flag went up.
A lot of people donated.
"We're becoming somewhat of a bedroom community, because we have a nice lifestyle here, low crime, very pretty," said Allen Monroe, an artist who is active in the historical society and whose family has been in town for four generations.
But Milo is out of the way, no question.
It's some three hours from Portland, and even if you're driving to the Moosehead Lake area you have to turn off at Dover-Foxcroft to get to Milo. It's not on the way to anywhere, really.
Watson came to Milo after building homes in the Boston suburbs in the 1950s and '60s.
At his Milo home, he has dozens of large, slightly faded color photos of some of the homes he built — ranches, split-levels, with all the modern features of the day.
IN-HOME SAWMILL
These days, Watson is just as optimistic as when he arrived in Milo 25 years ago.
At 91, Watson uses a golf cart to get around his property. He motors along at a good speed and talks about improvements he'll make to the campground or other houses he might build on his land.
"I'm gonna put fish in that pond, then fish 'em out myself in the winter and put them in the freezer," he said. "I won't let the snapping turtles eat them. I'll eat them myself."
Perhaps the most intriguing feature on his property is the in-home sawmill. It's ingenious, to say the least.
There's a conveyor belt to take raw cedar from the train cars in the basement up to the sawmill area on the home's second floor.
After the wood is cut, the shingles drop down chutes into the basement next to the bundling machine, where they are bundled, then sold. The scrap pieces, used for kindling, come down a different chute. Sawdust is blown through a tube, which runs out of the house into the woods.
Watson has about 1,000 feet of track laid over his property, much more than he needs to move wood from storage piles into the house. Much of the track today is overgrown with brush and weeds, and a couple of junked cars lay by one section.
Watson said he originally laid the track because he thought he might run a "kid's trolley" as a tourist attraction. But he never got around to it.
Though Watson is trying to sell the American Thread train engine, he figures he's already made more off the drying shed and contents than the $12,500 he paid for it. That's because he's sold off most of the track for $1 a foot, some of the cars for $500 each, and about 1,100 railroad spikes.
He says a man with a place on Moosehead Lake bought some of the track and laid it right in the water so that he could roll his boat in and out.
As for his train engine, Watson said he's tried to sell it before but no one will pay what he feels it's worth. So rather than let somebody "steal it" from him, he just holds onto it.
And waits for an opportunity.
Originally published Sunday, August 21, 2005
Staff Writer Ray Routhier can be contacted at 791-6454 or at rrouthier@pressherald.com
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