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No Longer Just a Summer Place
The Otis General Store is where the townspeople gather to talk
over coffee. Joyce Wasson and Ed Salisbury are regular morning
patrons. |
Drivers along Route
180, heading north from Ellsworth, pass into Otis without even
knowing it.
The absence of a
sign marking the town line is somewhat appropriate, because the
lines between Otis and its neighbors, Mariaville, and Ellsworth, are
somewhat blurred between education, public safety and services.
The town’s fire
coverage comes from the Mariaville Volunteer Fire Department.
Mariaville also provides half the budget and half the students for
Beech Hill School, an elementary school located on Route 180 in
Otis. But mail comes from Ellsworth, and most residents can’t
remember when it didn’t happen that way.
Residents describe
the town of 534 people as “close-knit.” And being close-knit makes
Otis a community that comes together with benefits and dinners that
help fellow residents in need.
For example, a
benefit concert was held Sept. 14 at the school for Lisa Turner and
her family. They had lost their
Point Road mobile home in a Aug. 26 fire.
Ed Salisbury,
Turner’s cousin, thinks enough money was collected to get Turner
well on her way toward a new mobile home.
In 1998, the
community came together to build a ballfield next door to the
school. Beech Hill School. Secretary Ann Austin called it a
“community project.” Labor and materials all were donated.
“We have a lot of
volunteers for a town this size,” said Suzanne Salisbury, the town’s
librarian and Historical Society treasurer.
Gathering pieces of
Otis’ history is
Salisbury’s
job.
The historical
society was started in 1989 because there was no written history of
the town.
“There were a
couple sentences in books in the Ellsworth Library, but that is it,”
she said. “It needs to be recorded before it is lost.”
A new history is
being written in Otis, for this community is growing by the dozens
each year.
“The growth is
unreal,” said Joyce Wasson, the town’s administrative assistant.
Between the 1990 census and 2000 census, the town’s population grew
from 320 to 543 residents.
Probably the
largest source of growth comes from the area around Beech Hill Pond.
“Camps are turning
into houses,” resident Ed Salisbury said.
The summer
population is even larger, as the camps around the town’s numerous
ponds fill with children looking to spend their days swimming—and
adults who want to relax.
“This place doubles
in the summer,” said Ed Salisbury.
Added Wasson: “The
lake is bumper-to-bumper cottages. There are not even a handful of
lots left.”
It’s not just boats
out on the lake. Summer also brings a fleet of about nine float
planes that make Beech Hill Pond their summer landing strip.
In the winter the
few planes that remain trade pontoons for skis and land on a plowed
strip of ice.
“It is a great town
to live in,” said lifelong resident Ilene Moore. “I never felt the
need to get away.” |
