Why Nobody Wants to Visit Orchard Beach, Maine Anymore

Old Orchard Beach, Maine was once defined by a single record-breaking structure. On July 2nd, 1898, the Berlin Iron Bridge Company completed a steel pier there — 1,825 feet long, built in six weeks for $38,000, and advertised as the longest steel pier in the world. It reached out over seven miles of hard, flat sand, built to hold every crowd the town could draw. But the pier that made Old Orchard Beach famous kept getting torn back down. A storm took 150 feet of it before its first season ended. Nine years later, in 1907, a fire took another hundred feet — the same night it destroyed six major hotels and roughly seventy cottages. A blizzard in 1978 took most of what remained a third time. Rebuilt in 1980 at just 500 feet — a little over a quarter of its 1898 length — it has never been restored beyond that, and by 2025 the crowds it was built for had thinned again. This is the story of how one steel pier defined Old Orchard Beach's golden age — and how storms, fire, and time cut it down to a quarter of what it once was. A full history documentary about Old Orchard Beach, Maine — from the golden age of its 1898 pier to what remains of it today. Copyright & Fair Use Disclaimer • This video is a non-commercial, educational history documentary created for commentary, criticism and research. • Some archival photos and footage are used under the principles of Fair Use (Section 107, U.S. Copyright Act) for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.