Lubec was once a thriving commercial community. Fishing the frigid Passamaquoddy waters, fisherman captured schools of herring in the weirs along the shore or encircled them in purse seines dropped from fishing boats. The town prospered. Hundreds of men, women and children packed sardines in dozens of canning factories lining the many wharves along Water Street. In the McCurdy complex, men and women smoked and skun herring for shipment in wooden boxes to distant markets.

The herring were smoked here in the last smokehouses operating commercially in the United States. Herring hung high in the rafters and smoke curled through the roof signaling to the town that all was well.

Commercial operations ceased in 1991 following unsatisfiable Food and Drug Administration regulations requiring that the fish be gutted before they were hung to be smoked. The smokehouses, acquired in the 1950s by Arthur L. McCurdy, were place on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993.

To your immediate right, the Mulholland Brothers Market, once a warehouse for the shucks used to make herring boxes which were used to package the product across the United States, Canada, and to the Caribbean, is now a gallery and gift shop.

Just north and east of the Mulholland Brothers marker are the skinning and packing sheds. The herring, after pickling in brine for five days, were “sticked” through the gill and out the mouth with yard-long hardwood sticks. The sticks were then placed on wooden carts and wheeled onto the wharf where they drained for an hour or two. Originally, wooden “horses” were used to transport the fish. These carts were carried everywhere by two men. The sticks of herring were then hung and smoke-cured slowly for six or seven weeks with carefully controlled fires by the firemen.

Today, the smokehouse, in need of extensive repairs, has had temporary pilings and horizontal cap pieces installed that will enable its rotted sills to be replaced as funds allow. A second smokehouse, extending from the rear of the skinning shed, collapsed in a Nor’easter in 1997, leaving the pickling shed isolated in the Lubec Narrows.

The skinning shed, with entirely new pilings, and the pickling shed, with a completely new roof and north wall, have undergone extensive restoration. In the pickling shed, herring from weirs were pumped in from carry-away boats, and eventually, from sardine carriers. They would be pickled in salt brine in large vats for approximately five days.

The herring, sticked about twenty to an oak hardwood stick, were hung high in the rafters until the smokehouses were full. They would be rotated up away from the more intense heat for a period of about seven weeks. Then, smokers took the golden brown herring from the top and wheeled them across the wharf to the skinning shed where women sat at stainless steel topped tables. Using sharp scissors, they removed the heads, tails and skin of the herring. The “skunned” herring were placed in a wax paper-lined box. The men then nailed down the lids for shipment to markets around the country and to the Caribbean where smoked herring was once a staple of the 18th century plantation culture.

During the summer of 2005, community volunteers began restoration of the skinning shed, including the sills, floor, and windows. They stripped and shingled exterior walls with locally sawn eastern white cedar shingles. With partial funding from the US Forest Service, a spruce decked wharf, a product of a local mill, was constructed to the west and south of the skinning shed. A local contractor sistered pilings and placed caps positioned at gable ends of smokehouse for stabilization and future replacement of rotted gable sills and caps.

Caps are broad horizontal beams place atop pilings to carry the weight of the floor, walls, and roof. Pictured here, the leaning sawdust shed was pulled away from the smokehouse and new pilings, caps, bracing and north-facing sill installed. Half of the total expenditures for restoration were derived from private fundraising sources.

Lubec Landmarks, Inc. is a non-profit organization founded in 1995 to restore and maintain the McCurdy smokehouse complex, and to preserve the region’s maritime and fishing heritage to the benefit of the town and visitors seeking to understand the commercial and cultural significance of the herring smoking and sardine canning industry in Lubec.