Route 7 Through Corinna
A clue from history and another current aerial photo may help answer the question of how Route 7 ended up with the sharp turn in Corinna.Dr. John Warren of Boston purchased the area that later became Corinna from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1804. According to Sawtell's history of Corinna*, Dr. Warren gave a man named Samuel Lancey 170 acres of land in exchange for bushing out a road near the center of the township along an east-west axis.
This photo, taken this week, from the air over Corinna looking due west shows West Main Street (now known as the Nokomis Road) entering from the top, running down onto Main Street and then out the Exeter Road to the bottom left of the photo. I added the green line to highlight the east-west path of this road. The Newport Road enters from the left onto Main Street. The Dexter Road exits to the right.
This may be the outcome of Samuel Lancey's work done almost 200 years ago. (This is just a guess on my part.) Perhaps what is now Route 7 was built well after the east-west road and it's bridge across the East Branch of the Sebasticook River had long been in place. If that is true, the sharp turn was the only way to avoid building a new bridge over the river.
