Growth and Change in the Park

Philip F. Chapman purchased the Concord Realty Company which included all the Wildwood land not already privately owned on October 31, 1923. The Chapmans converted the Wildwood Inn into their home. The famous shore dinners were no more. However, Mrs. Chapman does remember people coming around for many years to eat at the Inn. Once a party of people came to eat at the Inn and discovered it no longer was operating. They were very disappointed and begged to have a cup of coffee so that they could say that they had eaten at the Inn. After being refused by Mrs. Chapman, these same people, determined to be able to say that they had eaten in the Wildwood Park area, camped across the ravine and had a picnic lunch. Mrs. Chapman also recalls a visitor who told the Chapmans he had proposed to his wife on the porch of the Inn after one of the famous shore dinners.

The real estate development effort began to work. Early houses in Wildwood-besides the Inn (and Chapman residence)-were at 4 Concord Circle; at 8, 10, 11,12, 14, 15, 21, 22, 24, 26, and 32 Birch Lane; 16, 17, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 28, and 30 Pine Lane; and at 5, 20, 22, 26, and 32 Wildwood Boulevard. All of these were built before the end of the 1920s, but at that time only one of the homes-the Bjorns’s-apparently was used year round.

The growth of housing in Wildwood has seen many twists and turns, as even current residents know. Cottages were modified and expanded, sometimes several times, over the years. The Baxters at 16 Birch Lane note that theirs was the last of the original summer cottages to be lifted and have a cellar put in underneath. Two houses came fully fashioned from other places. Number 2 Birch, the latest wholly new structure in the Park, was originally built on the Payson estate, but then moved in 1992 for sale to a lot on the Lane that the Association agreed to incorporate into the Park. Another house came an even longer distance in the late 1940s. Norman and Lucy Leighton brought their home with them from Bath and set it on new foundations at 7 Concord Circle.

Wildwood was served by the trolley line along what is now Route 88. The original line between Monument Square and Yarmouth was opened in 1898, and for ten years was especially known for serving Underwood Springs Park and Casino in Falmouth (the beach area north of Town Landing near the present Forecaster offices). The Casino burned and Underwood Springs Park closed in 1907. By the time Wildwood Beach Park was getting going, service extended beyond Yarmouth to Brunswick. Trolleys ran every half hour from 6 a.m. to 11:30 p.m., and were fairly reliable. One report noted, though, that the cars had “a galloping motion at full speed,” and derailments were not uncommon. Gradually, trolleys lost out to the automobile. In 1910, there were four cars registered in Cumberland; five in Falmouth and Yarmouth together; and 538 in total for the metropolitan area that the Portland rail systems served. By 1922, 538 had grown to more than 10,000. Trolleys ran less frequently, and in 1933, the line was abandoned. Bus service at much less frequent intervals continued between Yarmouth and Portland along Route 88 through the 1950s. Eventually it, too, disappeared.