Down River Camps

* We are updating this section as facts are researched *

The Down River Camps was established back in the 1940s by Mahlon Slipp.  In the 1960's, he sold the business Cliff Green.  Our Family bought and moved to the camps in 1978.  The Camps have a interesting history behind them. For example, some of the cabins and equipment were originally part of the German POW camp that was located across the lake in Indian Township.

     On May 5th, I believe in 1944,  A special train drawn by two engines arrived in town and everybody gathered near the station to watch the unloading of the first detachment of German prisoners to arrive in this section of the country. There were 286 prisoners and 30 armed guards on the train, and surprising as it may seem, the prisoners were a jolly lot of young men ranging in age from 14 to 23 years. They were practically all Germans captured in the Tunisian campaign. They were loaded into trucks bound for the C.C.C. Camp at Princeton, me. The old camp has been converted into a prison Camp enclosed by an electrically charged wire fence 12 ft. high, with watchtowers and floodlights at each corner. The men are already at work peeling pulpwood for various mills in Eastern Maine.

The POW camp is gone now. When it was no longer used for its purpose, some of the items and equipment was used for various locations around the area. Down River Camps was one of them.