CORNELIA THURZA CROSBY (Nov. 10, 1854 - Nov. 11, 1946)
During the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, one of New England’s most celebrated names in fly fishing was Cornelia “Fly Rod” Crosby. Born in Phillips, Maine, a small town just south of the Rangeley Lakes region, her father died of "consumption" one month before her second birthday, and she was raised by her mother. By 1868, tuberculosis hit the family again; her brother died from the illness, and the toll on young Cornelia was a lifetime of compromised health that periodically kept her bedridden for weeks.
As a great-granddaughter of Col. Ezekiel Porter, commander of the Farmington militia, Cornelia had a maternal first cousin, James E. Porter (1844-1876), a lieutenant under Gen. George Custer. Dealing a fresh blow to the family, Lt. James Porter was killed along with the rest of Custer's forces in the battle at Little Big Horn.
As an adult, Crosby worked a variety of jobs, including ones for the local banks and regional railroads. Having received her first bamboo fly rod by 1878 from nearby Farmington rod maker Charles E. Wheeler (1847–1916), Crosby became a Rangeley fixture during the fishing seasons and had a reputation as a successful angler. Her nickname, Fly Rod, was in common use by 1886. The local newspaper, the Phillips Phonograph, often included comments about Crosby and her fishing trips. The editor of the newspaper soon approached her about writing a regular column, and in July 1889 Crosby submitted features under the name of Fly Rod to the Phonograph. She wrote about the fishing, the people, the places, and the happenings that she saw; her coverage of these topics continued throughout her entire writing career, including in her column, “Fly Rod’s Note Book.”
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IT WAS DURING THIS PERIOD WHEN SHE WAS THE FIRST TO USE THE SLOGAN
"MAINE - THE NATION'S PLAYGROUND."
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In 1895 Crosby convinced the Maine Central Railroad to sponsor an exhibition at the first annual Sportsmen’s Exposition in New York City. She and two Rangeley guides manned a Maine booth displaying taxidermy and a log cabin. This modest display brought great visibility to the state and helped to increase tourism. Crosby organized and presented expanded displays again in 1896, 1897, and 1898, as well as at similar expositions in Boston. She published articles about these events, discussing her short-skirted sporting outfit by Spaulding Brothers and her meeting the famed shooter Annie Oakley.
While attending the 1897 Sportsmen’s Exposition, Crosby was informed about the passage of an important bill in Maine. For years, through the Maine Sportsmen’s Fish and Game Association, she had lobbied for the licensing of guides both to assure that guides were professionally qualified and as a way to generate funds for fish and game protection. In appreciation of her efforts the state of Maine ceremonially awarded Fly Rod Crosby Registered Maine Guide license number 1 in 1898.
The following year, Crosby suffered a tremendous injury to her knee. Some accounts claimed that she fell while disembarking a train; some believe her skirt became caught and she was dragged by a train; and Crosby herself recounted that she slipped on a piece of coal. However it happened, Crosby was physically and, for the most part, emotionally crippled by this unfortunate accident. Her days of fly fishing and hunting decreased greatly, and her newspaper articles diminished while she was in and out of hospitals. For the last twenty years of her life, Fly Rod Crosby devoted her time to her church and community causes.
Cornelia Crosby will be remembered as someone who devoted her adult life to the improvement and preservation of Maine’s fish and game. Besides ushering in the licensing of guides, Crosby promoted catch and release, supported the need to license hunters, and the use of red hats to make hunters visible, advanced the idea of catch limits for all fish and game, coined the promotional phrase “Maine - the nation's playground,” proposed a game park for moose, and helped establish the Maine State Museum.
Time Flies
WHAT IT WAS LIKE THEN
Late-nineteenth-century traveling porcelain tea service that once belonged to Crosby, from the collection of the Phillips Historical Society.
Narrow-gauge train to Rangeley
By promoting opportunities in outdoor recreational Fly Rod Crosby helped the narrow-gauge Sandy River & Rangeley Lakes Railroad to prosper, which brought passengers and needed goods far into the Maine woods.
Published Article
A version of this article was offered to the Northwoods Sporting Journal and to the Maine Sportsman
If you are a Registered Maine Guide, especially one who takes people fishing, you know the name Fly Rod Crosby. Please say that you do. If I told you there is a connection between Cornelia Crosby and the Sandy River, you might suspect only that she fished those clear, fast-flowing waters. But if you are a Maine railroad fan, you have surely heard of the Sandy River Railroad.
The two-foot gauge railroads that connected so many small Maine towns had their start with the birth of the Sandy River Railroad in 1879. Its original trace began at the Maine Central Railroad’s northern terminus in Farmington and extended “Lilliput” service northward through Franklin County to the towns of Strong and Phillips. Maine’s other narrow-gauge railroads, each of which had its start by the early 1890s, included the Bridgton & Saco, the Monson, the Kennebec Central, and the Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington.
Have I lost you already? Who’s this Fly Rod Crosby and what does she have to do with the railroads?
By 1886 Cornelia Crosby had been nicknamed “Fly Rod,” and her home town newspaper, the Phillips Phonograph, often included comments about her and her fishing trips. It was in 1889 when O. M. Moore, the editor of the Phillips Phonograph, asked her about writing regular articles for the paper, and in July 1889 her first features were being printed in the newspaper. It was a chatty account of fishing adventures and misadventures, people she saw and what was happening, with information about where to stay and what the sporting camps were like. The newspaper called her column, Fly Rod’s Note Book, and in a short time her articles became a syndicated column appearing in newspapers in New York, Boston, and Chicago.
She caught the attention of the Maine Central Railroad, which was looking to replace its declining freight business with tourists. Maine’s population was moving to the city as young people left their farms to work in factories and mills. The railroad paid Fly Rod to promote Maine’s outdoor industry. It was she who came up with the slogan, “Maine — the Nation’s Playground.”
So it was no coincidence that, almost as soon as Crosby’s column began in the Phonograph, the Sandy River Railroad was pressured to extend its rail line 29 miles from Phillips, where Crosby lived, to Rangeley, to reach the cluster of lakes that were the fishing paradise in the region.
In 1889 the Phillips & Rangeley RR was chartered as an extension of the Sandy River RR, and began operations two years later, bringing outdoorsmen from far to the south, who could ride the Maine Central to Farmington and enjoy a short day’s journey by narrow-gauge the rest of the way to the Rangeley Lakes. And thus the original Sandy River Railroad became the SR&RL, the Sandy River & Rangeley Lakes.
Most Mainers who know the state’s outdoor recreational opportunities probably know the rest of the story, or most of it. As a refresher: In 1895 Crosby convinced the Maine Central Railroad to sponsor an exhibition at the first annual Sportsmen’s Exposition in New York City. She and two Rangeley guides hosted a Maine booth displaying Maine taxidermy and the surprising feature of a complete log cabin. This not-so-modest display brought great visibility to the state and helped to increase tourism. Crosby organized and presented expanded displays again in 1896, 1897, and 1898, as well as at similar expositions in Boston. She published articles about these events, discussing her “scandalous” short-skirted sporting outfit by Spaulding Brothers and her becoming acquainted with the famed shooter, Annie Oakley.
While attending the 1897 Sportsmen’s Exposition, Crosby was informed about the passage of an important bill in Maine. For years, through the Maine Sportsmen’s Fish and Game Association, she had lobbied for the licensing of guides, both to assure that guides were professionally qualified and as a way to generate funds for fish and game protection. In appreciation of her efforts the state of Maine ceremonially awarded Fly Rod Crosby Registered Maine Guide license number 1 in 1898.
Maine’s narrow-gauge railroads remained in commercial operation for nearly 60 years but did not compete effectively against better roads and faster automobiles. All ceased operations one by one between the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II in the 1940s. Three have been resurrected in part, though, operating now as the WW&F out of Albion, the SR&RL Museum in Phillips, and the Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad Company & Museum in Portland.
What about Fly Rod Crosby? And why is this important now? Cornelia’s outdoor activity was severely curtailed after a knee injury in 1899, but she continued writing about the outdoor life for many years. She lived until a day after her ninety-second birthday in 1946, long enough to see both the beginning and the end of the tiny railroads’ original existence.
A committee of Maine Guides and colleagues calling ourselves Friends of Fly Rod, all volunteers, has selected a sculptor and commissioned a statue of Cornelia Crosby that will be erected at the entrance to the new headquarters of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife when it opens in 2027 in Augusta. The sculptor is Erin McCarthy, and the life-size bronze statue will be crafted right here in Maine.
At FriendsofFlyRod.org the committee has brought together additional background on Crosby as well as period photographs, links for further reference, and information on the design of the statue. The statue is being funded entirely by donations with the cooperation of the Maine Professional Guides Association’s Maine Guides Education Fund, a 501(c)(3), so here is a great opportunity for all outdoorsmen and women to chip in to assure that this legendary woman of Maine is recognized as she deserves to be.
The Friends of Fly Rod will have a booth at the State of Maine Sportsman’s Show at the Augusta Civic Center, March 27-29, 2026, so be sure to see us there (although we don’t plan to bring a log cabin).
