Box 769, Millinocket, Maine 04462
My oldest son, Jeffrey, and I have been crisscrossing the remote
woods areas of Maine with four-wheeler and float plane for the past
several years, and have begged, scrounged, and bought several
antique engines and tractors, but none have meant as much as the
little Fordson crawler.
On a bright, sunny Sunday afternoon in August, 1979, Jeff and I
landed at Chesuncook Village, a remote settlement located at the
northern tip of Chesuncook Lake. We were met at the dock by Burt
McBurnie. There are several summer residents at the village, but
Burt and his wife are the only year-round residents.
I asked Burt if he knew of any old ‘one-lunger’ engines
in the village and he told me that a collector had bought the only
three that he knew about a while back. Jeff and I then asked him if
he knew of any old steel-wheel tractors in the area and we
immediately noticed his face light up.
‘There is an old steel-wheel something down in the woods at
the Frank LeRoy place,’ he said. ‘It is an old tractor that
Alec Gunn used to own.’
Jeff and I practically ran in the direction Burt pointed, trying
to find Mr. LeRoy. We found the man and he cheerfully showed us the
little Fordson tractor. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There it
was sitting under the evergreens protected from the weather by a
natural shelter. Everything seemed to be intact and the engine
turned over easily with the crank. The radiator had frozen and
split many winters ago and an 8-inch fir had grown up between the
seat and the steering wheel.
For me, it was love at first sight, but Mr. LeRoy had other
ideas. He knew no problem with me restoring the crawler, but he
knew what the value was of old cast iron to a few nuts like me and
he wanted to reserve the right to buy the tractor back from me in
five years for whatever monies I ended up investing.
It took about two weeks and many flights to Chesuncook Village
before I finally secured a bill of sale and exclusive rights to the
little Fordson.
The easy part was over. How do you move a 2-ton hulk of cast
iron down 20 miles of Chesuncook Lake? The most promising solution
seemed to be a long wait until the lake froze over and then the
tractor could be towed South the 20 miles to Ripogenus Dam. That
is, until I talked to Mr. McBurnie again and he told me about a
little-known tote road from the Great Northern Paper Company’s
‘Golden Road’ 18 miles through the woods to Chesuncook
Village-not a freeway, but passable.
The Saturday for the assault finally arrived, and our party
started off on a combination picnic and tractor retrieving day. The
group included my good friend David Moore, his wife Lin, our two
boys Jeff and Shawn, and the family canine ‘Smokey.’
We towed a 16-foot lowbed trailer behind a John Deere 550
crawler through the woods to the village. The trip went very
smoothly and we had the little Fordson winched onto the lowbed and
were ready for the return ride before lunch.
Except for a couple of short layovers in some of the larger mud
holes, we made the trip back to the ‘Golden Road’ very
easily, and had the Fordson home and in my garage before nightfall.
It was the first time the old crawler had turned a track in 42
years.
Our Fordson crawler is a model ‘F’, serial #565497. It
was built in Dearborn, Michigan in 1926. The tractor was bought new
by Mr. Alec Gunn and operated by him from 1926 until 1937. The
little crawler was used to tote supplies, mail, and people, to and
from the remote village 12 months of the year. During the summer,
the Fordson made two trips two times a week out to the Grant Farm
over rough woods roads, barely better than foot paths. After the
late fall freeze-ups, Henry’s little tractor would pull a sled
up and down the twenty miles of barren ice land known as Chesuncook
Lake.
Eventually progress brought better equipment, and in 1937 Mr.
Gunn retired the tractor. The Fordson lay quietly in the woods of
Chesuncook Village from 1937 until we bought it in August of
1979.
Two weeks were spent getting the old tractor to run, and then it
was completely disassembled and restored. Everything that showed
any wear was repaired or replaced.
I think the finished product would make Alec Gunn as proud as we
are, if he could see his little Fordson today.
Our tractor stable has grown to include several more Fordson and
a very rare John Deere series ‘P’, but that first little
Fordson crawler is still something very special to me.
