A. J. “Allie” Cole was a Maine highway pioneer who in 1917 began horse drawn mail, freight, and passenger service between Enfield and Burlington, Maine. By the 1920s he hauled freight in motor trucks north to Houlton. Severe snows and the lack of public plowing above Lincoln forced him to abandon the service every winter until 1928, when he stationed his own plow crews at Silver Ridge, 20 miles northeast. In 1935 the state took over winter plowing to northern Maine.