Report : Activities on the Dead River Tree Farm Area, 1908-1966

Dwight B. Demeritt began working in the university’s forestry department in 1923 at the recommendation of Clarence Cook Little, who served as University of Maine president from 1922–25. Demeritt was the head of the Forestry Department from 1934–45 and vice president and woodlands manager for the Dead River Company and Eastern Corporation of Bangor until his retirement in 1963. He died in 1972. The Dwight B. Demeritt University Forest was named for Demeritt in 1971 in recognition of his work to procure the land for the University of Maine. Four tracts of government land near UMaine — almost 2,000 acres — were acquired by lease in 1939 and then by deed in 1955, with the intention of being managed by the Forestry Department. (from https://umaine.edu/150; accessed 6/1/2022)

Founded in 1909 by Charles Hutchins, Dead River Company had its roots in the forest products industry. The company was named for the Dead River, which flowed through much of its timberland in remote areas of Western Maine. In the 1930s, Curtis Hutchins took over management of the company from his father. The purchase of a small petroleum bulk storage plant, four gasoline stations and an Esso franchise, in 1936, marked Dead River Company's entrance into the petroleum business.

Steady expansion throughout Eastern, Northern and Central Maine followed, and they established their headquarters in Bangor. In 1981, the Dead River Company sold nearly all of their timberland to the Passamaquoddy Tribe and the Penobscot Indian Nation as part of a historic settlement. (from https://www.deadriver.com/about-us/our-history; accessed 6/1/2022)

The Eastern Corporation owned paper mills in Brewer, Orono and Lincoln, Maine. The company began in the 1880s in Brewer as a sawmill, with a sulfite pulp mill built in 1889 to use waste products from the sawmill. In 1896, the company, now called the Eastern Manufacturing Company, began to make both chemical wood fiber and rag paper at the site, later changing the emphasis to the manufacture of fine business papers. In 1915 the company acquired the Katahdin Pulp and Paper Company in Lincoln and in 1930 purchased the Orono Pulp and Paper Company. In 1939 the company was reorganized as the Eastern Corporation, with executive offices in Bangor and sales offices in Boston, New York, Chicago and Atlanta. Eastern Corporation became the Eastern Fine Paper and Pulp Division of Standard Packaging Corporation in 1958. In 1969 the company became part of the Eddy Paper Company of Ottawa. Financial difficulties led the mill to enter bankruptcy protection in the late 1990s and it closed completely in 2004. (from https://snaccooperative.org; accessed 6/1/2022)