Hometown Economies: Wilton

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Established in 1803, the town of Wilton has an economic history largely tied to timber and textile milling and shoe manufacturing, including related leather tanneries. Raw materials, water power and a ready labor force made small Maine towns like Wilton a natural for manufacturing. Young people followed the money as workers quit school or moved into town from neighboring farms and villages to work at the Wilton Woolen Mill, at one time the largest privately owned woolen mill in New England, and the Bass Shoe Company.

Bootmaker George H. Bass started operations in Wilton in 1876 and soon G. H. Bass & Company became the town’s largest employer. The company made the fleece-lined moccasins worn by Charles Lindbergh on his 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic and the boots that Admiral Richard Byrd wore on his second expedition to Antarctica (1933-35).

G. H. Bass employed around 1,200 workers at its height and remained the town’s largest employer until cheaper labor overseas caused the company to shut its Wilton factory in 1998. At that time, about 350 workers – in a town with only 3,900 residents -- lost their jobs when the shoe factory closed. With the town’s primary economic engine gone, the need to reinvent its economic base for a new era never seemed more pressing.

In 2004, Nichols Development LLC, a group consisting of four businessmen and entrepreneurs, purchased the former G. H. Bass & Company property from Phillips-Van Heusen (Bass’s parent company), the Town of Wilton and the non-profit Wilton Development Corporation. According to a Central Maine Morning Sentinel newspaper article about the sale, “A critical part of the deal was the commitment that the Nichols' team would create a commercial hub and bring jobs to the economically depressed community.”