Thursday, Take A Virtual Tour Of Bangor's Great Fire of 1911

Have you ever really just stopped to look around Bangor?

For real. When I was a little kid, I was fascinated by tall things, so I actually believed the buildings downtown were skyscrapers. Seriously. In my little imagination, the Freese's Building and the Empire State Building were the same things. I mean, to a 4-year-old, 3-foot tall kid with an overactive imagination, it wasn't a hard stretch.

But it did cause me to do quite a bit of looking around. For instance, I didn't really understand why some buildings looked so different than others. Of course, some were built 30 years ago, and others 150 years ago. But again, at the age of 4, you don't get that. But I did love looking up and seeing what it was all about.

Bangor's landscape has one big factor that's made it what it is.

In 1911, like many cities everywhere, there was a massive fire that just gutted the downtown area. Dozens of buildings were decimated, and it was nothing but scorched earth left behind, a city totally in ruins. Portland suffered a similar situation more than once in its history. Fires were literally the worst-case scenario in those times.

Thursday, you can take a virtual tour through Bangor's downtown and see how it was torn apart and put back together again through an online event being presented by the Bangor Historical Society. You'll be taken through it in several steps, and see the impact it's had on the buildings you see standing right now, according to WABI.

If you go to the BHS Facebook page, there's a link where you can get a Zoom invitation to join in. If you're into Bangor's history at all, this will be pretty cool.