Incorporated relatively recently in Maine history, Millinocket officially became a town in 1901, two years after the formation of the Great Northern Paper Company, which chose this site at the confluence of Millinocket Stream and the Penobscot River’s west branch as the location for its mill. Since the area was so remote and not near any existing communities, a town essentially had to be built in order to house the workers the company would need to operate the mill.

For about a hundred years, Great Northern Paper was the economic lifeblood of the town, by far the largest employer and the provider of thousands of jobs that for a time provided Millinocket residents (and their neighbors in East Millinocket) with among the highest per capita incomes in Maine.

While the first signs that things wouldn’t always be that way had already become apparent, the sale of GNP to Georgia-Pacific in 1989 was the first in a series of ownership changes, name changes, layoffs, asset sales and bankruptcy filings that would usher in a period of economic instability and deprive Millinocket residents of the certainty that there would always be jobs available to them. Today, the mills in Millinocket and East Millinocket employ a combined total of about 540 employees, a much lower number than in the past.

Millinocket is now home to a struggling service sector and is working to create a major recreational gateway to some of the state’s most well known and beloved natural attractions. Millinocket, of course, sits at the base of Mount Katahdin – Maine’s tallest mountain and a treasure in and of itself – and also heralds the terminus of the Appalachian Trail. A variety of lakes and ponds in pristine wilderness and the mighty Penobscot River all have much to offer the community in the way of economic development.

Millinocket derives its name from an Abenaki word meaning “land of many islands,” which refer to the islands that dot this stretch of the Penobscot River. However, that same phrase might apply as much to its disagreeing factions debating the best way forward for the town, whose declining economic fortunes of late have yielded competing visions of how best to adapt to changing times.