What Is the Great Northern Mill in Millinocket, Maine?

The Great Northern Paper Company Mill in Millinocket, Maine, is an old paper company mill. While some changes have occurred to the Great Northern Mill in Millinocket Maine over time, the mill has a long and distinguished history that should be celebrated.

The Great Northern Mill in Millinocket Maine is a mill where paper was made and distributed.

• Production of paper at the Great Northern Mill traditionally started with the raw materials and ending as a finished product.
• For many years, the company operated under the name the Great Northern Paper Company; however, eventually they sold the mill to a new paper company known as the Katahdin Paper Company.
• The Katahdin Paper Company is basically the Great Northern Paper Company under a new and restructured financial ownership. 

Production at the Mill

• The founding of the Great Northern Paper Company began in 1897 when the company opened under the Northern Development Company.
• The Northern Development company recognized the immense value of the trees and resources available in the Millinocket area and saw how those trees and resources could be used for the production and distribution of paper and paper products. 
• When the Great Northern Mill Paper Company was developed, this spurred and largely began the development of the Millinocket, Maine area. It, in a sense, created an industrial revolution that would forever change the face of that area. 
• In 1900, the first paper products made in the area were produced at the Great Northern Paper Company.
• Subsequently, production of a third paper mill in the area began in 1906, showing that the expansion and growth of the company was rapid and inevitable.

Millinocket, Maine

The town of Millinocket Maine was not started until roughly 1907, when a vote was taken during which money was appropriated to build a school, a water supply company (that would later be known as the Great Northern Water Supply Company) a fire hall and other necessary infrastructures in the area around the town.

As the town continued to grow and prosper, there were other additional buildings and services that were added to the town, including the founding of a town cemetery that began being built in 1919. A municipal building was also built in 1915 that housed a jail, movie theater, government offices, and a number of other essential town functions. 

Much of this expansion can potentially be explained by looking at the founding and prosperity of the Great Northern Paper Company Mill. The paper mill had been buily beginning around the year 1899 in the town of Millinocket, Maine, which was previously just a large forested area before the paper company came to do business there.

Mill Today

The Great Northern Mill in Millinocket Maine continues to evolve with the times. For example, this mill is working on creating a biomass or biological material boiler for their plant that would reduce their requirement for fossil fuels and other types of man made resources that are limited in number. This would allow them to use 100% of the material that they receive from a tree and not to waste any of it with unusable pieces.