Following the Revolutionary War, Arthur Noble II (son of Arthur Noble) purchased in the present town of Ohio, and called it "Nobleboro". He built a saw mill there to export lumber to Ireland. In 1790 Noble got a road built to Nobleboro so that he could ride to his saw mill in a coach-and-four. Some logging occurred at Nobleboro before the Civil War, but by the late 1800s a new call for lumber and paper caused new activity in the woods of the region. Pulp and paper mills were built at Hinkley, with saw mills and a debarking mill at Nobleboro. The vast forests to the north were still in private ownership and they supplied these industries for decades. Each spring logs and pulpwood were flushed downstream on the wave of snowmelt and Nobleboro was an important staging area for these log drives. The foundation logs of the river drive dam that controlled water flow can still be seen at the river's edge. Log drives continued on the West Canada Creek until 1949. Since then the land here has healed nearly hiding the once-thriving industrial complex once known as "Nobleboro, the gateway to the great north woods".