Day Fur Company
Belgrade history can pop up in unexpected places. I came across this picture of Day Fur Company of Belgrade hanging on the wall of the lobby at Cabela’s Sporting Goods store in Scarborough, Maine. As a picture is said to be worth a thousand words, there must be quite a story behind this picture.
Day Fur Company was established by James Day and his two sons, Gary, and Darryl in the late 1950s. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, warm fur coats, hats, gloves, and jackets were considered fashionable and very much in demand.
This need fueled a whole industry in hunting and trapping to provide pelts. The demand helped to boost the winter income of northern hunters and trappers and their families. The Day family maintained their own traplines but also bought pelts and furs from other hunters and trappers.
Originally the Days worked with fur buyer Merritt Kimball of Waterford, Maine to sell the furs at auction in New York City, but later they worked directly with the New York buyers and European buyers as well. This proved to be a very lucrative move for Day Fur Company which grew to be the largest operation of its type in northern New England with a national and international presence.
Maine Sportswriter, Gene Letourneau, who wrote the popular long-running newspaper column “Sportsmen Say” for the Morning Sentinel, was responsible for the iconic picture. According to Letourneau, “Day and his two sons had covered the entire wall of a barn with assorted pelts of foxes, racoons, fishers, mink, muskrat, otters and coyotes” just prior to a visit from Letourneau. Taken in 1974 — the 1942 date on the Cabela’s picture frame plaque is incorrect — this photograph received widespread publication. Eventually the picture ended up on the walls of Cabela’s stores across the United States.
As the demand for furs declined with changes in fashion in the 1980s, and the availability of synthetic materials, the trapping industry also declined, and as a result, Day Fur Company closed in the late 1980s.
Dianne Dowd is vice president of the Belgrade Historical Society.
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