By Mike Davis

BN History Columnist

Howdy neighbor!

Some time ago, while digging around in the old papers and local history reports of Norman Libby down to the Historical Society, I found the following brief notice of a peculiar stone in North Bridgton, which I feel is worth sharing, for it smacks of that certain flavor of old-time, rustic charm which our modern age just cannot duplicate. It is a story of North Bridgton and concerns a once famous local boulder that past generations once knew by name — and a very strange name it was! To begin, Libby writes;

“Near the Academy at North Bridgton, there can be seen sitting quietly beside the road a stone of moderate size, to which chance or happenstance in days long past has since affixed a highly singular name. It is universally known to the youth of this village by the name of ‘salt pork,’ likely from its bearing some imagined resemblance to a great lump of that coarse fare so common in the early days of the settlement. But this alone is not what makes it worthy of notice, and without doubt it would have long since been broken up and hauled away by the elders of the village, were it not for the singular reverence held by it among their children. For however it earned this descriptive sobriquet, the title is perpetually reanointed by the youth of this place, who in going to and from their studies never fail but to stop before it and kick up over the old stone a liberal quantity of dust from the road, or else cast upon it sand taken up from the shores of the lake, so that the traveler passing on his way cannot fail in any season of finding this curious form of pork liberally strewn with a coating of earthly ‘salt’ bestowed by passing children, who are themselves no doubt as ignorant as to the reason for their behavior as are their sires, saving only that in the simple earnestness of youth they declare it has always been their custom to do so.”

Despite my best research, I have only succeeded in finding one other reference to this landmark, and it is far from agreeable, for it comes by way of a literary device in a children’s novel by Abby Morton Diaz entitled, “The Flat Iron and the Red Cloak; or, Old Times at Cross-Roads.” To be clear, this is not a history book. It was published in 1901 just a few years before her death, for Mrs. Diaz had been born in 1821, and so far, as I can tell, this book is a children’s story set in a fictionalized version of the author’s childhood.

While our surviving records of scholars at Bridgton Academy, especially in the antebellum period, are vastly incomplete, it seems certain that either she herself or perhaps some of her many children or nieces, to whom she dedicates her books, must at one time have come to Bridgton to attend boarding school at BA, for in her book she has her main characters pass a great stone crucial to the plot called, “White Rock,” whereupon her main character observes its visual similarity to the great stone “Salt Pork” which she’d once head of at a place called Bridgton. She writes:

“So, Emily put both hands up to her face, but talked through between then, saying that white rock was ’bout the size of the one they used to call ‘salt pork’ over at Bridgton, and all the children used to stop going home from school, and salt it with sand.”

So, there you have it folks, Salt Pork existed. Of course, I should say here that the first account from Mr. Libby was already enough to convince me of this stone’s reality; he was a careful historian and seems to have understood the value of documenting local folklore and the stories behind minor landmarks or place names which might otherwise be forgotten. Working as he did in the 1900s, 10s and 20s, he collected many tidbits of history which would otherwise have been entirely forgotten. Since he’s never played me false in any of his other stories, on his authority I trust the foregoing narrative. That said, it is always a pleasure and indeed a relief to find corroboration in the separate writings of others, even if in this case it comes only as a minor line in an otherwise obscure children’s book.

All that being said, what of it now? Does Salt Pork still exist? Well sadly I must report that asking around among my several friends who grew up in North Bridgton, I can at least confirm that it seems to have been utterly forgotten, at least among the modern generations. Possibly, there are still old-timers around who know of it, but no one I talked to has any recollection of even hearing such a story. This does not necessarily mean that Salt Pork no longer exists, only that the present generations have forgotten about it. I took a drive through the village the other day, looking up and down the streets trying to find a wayside boulder of any form, let alone one I could imagine looking like a lump of pork. I did not succeed, unless one counts the stone in the little heater piece at the foot of Chadbourne Road below the old North Bridgton Church, sitting almost beside the Academy and almost opposite where the old brick schoolhouse used to stand, and on which are now placed memorial plaques to local veterans of the First and Second World Wars, Leroy A. Allen and Roger F. Woodbury. But so far as I know, I believe this stone was placed there specifically to be that monument, and so cannot be our old time Salt Pork. Very likely it was lost when the village streets were paved, widened, and paved again at intervals over the long decades since.

Of course, if you live in North Bridgton and happen to have heard anything about a stone the children used to throw sand on, or if you own property in the village with a little boulder sitting beside the road which I’ve somehow overlooked, and which kids would have passed on their way to and from either BA or the old North Bridgton Schoolhouse in days gone by, please do write in with the details.

Even if Salt Pork is no more, as seems likely, I do hope you’ve enjoyed its charming reminiscence, and think of it the next time you find yourself on the dusty lanes of old North Bridgton.

Till next time!