Fueling the Harbor Community

In 1891, Pal Pierce established a coal and wood business on the current site of the Oceanside Golf Resort, and Herman Hartung joined him as a partner in 1900. Coal arrived by barge, and local resident Lester Maddocks recalled that if a coal barge traveled east of the Cuckolds, it cost Pierce and Hartung $2 more a ton. The stove wood came from Nova Scotia and was all maple, as Pierce and Hartung required. In 1911, a hardware store was added to the company's holdings and remained in business until the early 1980s. In a photo taken from the water, the yard's coal derrick dominates the skyline, with the Pickert sardine factory next on the waterfront, later used by Pierce and Hartung for storage, and the tall white building in the background identified as the east side grammar school.

Boothbay Harbor, Maine · United States