Hugh J. Chisholm

Ambitious and imaginative, Canadian-born industrial giant Hugh J. Chisholm moved to Portland in the 1870s, where he established a successful publishing business. Fascinated by the undeveloped areas of the Androscoggin valley, including those bypassed by railroads, Chisholm organized a paper-manufacturing firm at Livermore Falls in 1881 and another—the Otis Falls Paper Company—in the town of Jay in 1887. Five years earlier, however, he had visited the Great Falls at Rumford and soon became determined to create a “City in the Wilderness” at that location.