Cole Land Transportation Museum

Cole Land Transportation Museum
Established 1989
Location 405 Perry Road
Bangor, Maine, USA
Coordinates 44°47′06″N 68°48′12″W / 44.784982°N 68.803232°W / 44.784982; -68.803232
Type Transportation
Website www.colemuseum.org

The Cole Land Transportation Museum is a depository of land transportation vehicles used on dirt roads as well as state and interstate highways in the U.S. state of Maine. The museum was assembled over many years and opened to the public in 1989 by the industrialist and philanthropist Galen Cole in his home city of Bangor, Maine.[1] It is located at 405 Perry Road and is open seasonally from May 1 to November 11.

Features of the museum

The museum contains the former Maine Central Railroad Company station house that was located in Enfield, Maine. The structure was the original building from which Cole's father, Albert J. "Allie" Cole (1893-1955),[1] started a business in 1917 hauling the mail. There is also a Maine Central Railroad car and the front car of the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad engine, which one may board and watch taped recordings about various museum exhibits. The Cole Museum houses a blacksmith shop, later a garage in East Lowell, Maine, where Allie Cole shod his horses. Many vehicles of the Cole Express Company are displayed to reflect the history of the company.[2]

The Cole Museum features vintage automobiles, including a Stanley Steamer, a Ford Fairlane, a Ford Galaxie, a Buick, a Volkswagen, and the Oldsmobile 98, the official vehicle of Governor Joseph E. Brennan of Maine, who served from 1979 to 1987. There are early horse-drawn wagons and a prairie schooner, which is a scaled-down covered wagon. The museum also includes early motorcycles, mopeds, a few bicycles, snowplows and a snow roller, which are important for the Maine winters, farm tractors, a potato harvester, a horse-drawn hearse, a bus, trailers pulled by trucks, and delivery trucks of dairy products and ice. A special room includes a command car used in World War II, in which Galen Cole had been a young soldier.[2] There are also outdoor military vehicle exhibits of both World War II and the Vietnam War.

The museum's recordings include the moving life story of Galen Cole's handicapped sister, Dorothy, who lived only to the age of forty. She was wheelchair-bound her whole life, but was an inspiration to all whom she met.[3]

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cole Land Transportation Museum.
  1. 1 2 "Galen Cole and the Cole Land Transportation Museum". Maine Seniors magazine. Retrieved July 21, 2014.
  2. 1 2 "Cole Vehicles Cover Maine from Dirt Roads to Super Highways, 1917-1997", museum brochure, Bangor, Maine
  3. ↑ Cole Museum exhibit
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