The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1873-01-07
m. r.,.ua. Liz mn their Voice.

Mr.. EDIroR:-The people of this island art
again amusing themselves in their usual win
ter fashion, viz: holding "road meetings, which
invariably result in the same thing, and that is
drawing up petition, addressed to the "Hon
B GARD of Mayor and Aldermen of the City Of
Portland" begging them TO lay out and grade
public road or street on Peaks Island, aud the
said Hon Board of Aldermen Just as invaria-
bly, manage to put the thing off and keep us as
| we are. Now, Mr.. Editor, propose to explain
| in few words just hOW we are, and have been
for years There is a population OF about 300
| Inhabitants now upon the island, over fifty
dwelling houses and qute.a number OF public
buildings; there is very large daily travel to
this place in the summer, as al residents of
Portland are aware, while tourists and invalids
from all parts of the United States and Canada
fill the hotels and boarding houses and make
the Island already somewhat noted as sum
mer resort; post Office has been established
here, rendered necessary by the growing inter-
estS OF the place,-yet, with all this, we are ut
terly without ROADS! There are to-day 300
people here who cannot go to the Post Office
for their letters, to the steamboat landing for
transportation, nor to the church for salvation
without tire ;passing on their neighbors proper
ty In fact, not single inhabitdnt can get to
church or school house without traversing pri-
vate lands the entire distance. Can parallel
case be found elsewhere? lis there a town in
Maine, of ever so recent growth that is IS badly
off as we are? And yet, Mr.. Editor, this is the
one thing that we have been pettioning and
begging to have rectified for the past TWENTY
YEARS
Every winter the people come together, hold
a series of meetings, and petition to the city
government for road, aud that's the end of
IL. The authorities allow the most trivial thing
Imaginable to answer for reason for not
granting the prayer, or else they calmly ignore
the subject altogether. They are determined
not to give us a road that is evident; aud if
the Almighty had not given us a way, broad
and level between here and Portland, ] doubt |
if we could get THERE, even, when we wish to
spend our money!
1t seems almost incredible that place as at
tractive to strangers, and populous in itself as
Peaks Island should be kept by the city au- |
thorities without street of some kind, even if |
poor one, up to the present time-though of |
course, it never was so badly needed in the past |
as it is now, and will be in the future. The
reason, they tell us, why we can't be accom-
modated, is because the inhabitants won't all |
give their land for street." and so, forsooth,
a whole community has been and must be
obliged to do without an improvement to which
ais will not accede to the demand of qiUino
their land for a street! ga poor excuse" it is
said, lis better than none;" out we think II is
getting to be a little "too thin" to stuff us with
that threadbare plea any longer As was re-
marked at the meeting the other night "there
must be som way to get road on this island"
and it little town of three hundred inhabi-
tants cann't get street to walk in, from the
City Fathers, after twenty years Of humble
peal to that power to which even the city gov
of Portland is subservient.
"PEAKs ISLAND"
PEAKS ISLAND, Jan. 9th, 1873