North New Portland hosts Morton’s Country Store, the Community Church, and Chase Memorial Hall. This village lies at the junction of routes 146 and 16, with Gilman Stream, and its Dam, flowing through it. See photos. The Carrabassett River, with its spectacular rocky bed, passes through East New Portland Village and under an arch bridge.
In the 1880’s the town had a large tannery, two saw mills, and a starch factory. It has frontage on Drew and Nickerson lakes, along with a half-dozen small ponds. See photos. The main village of the town, just west of Houlton, nearly surrounds Nickerson Lake, which it shares with Linneus. It is the birthplace of Dora Pinkham, the first woman to served in the Maine Legislature.
home for Pineland Center from 1908 to 1996, that facility for the mentally retarded was known as the “Maine School for the Feeble-Minded” and later as the Pownal State School. See photos. It has been redeveloped as an office park. The multiple-use campus hosts professional, educational, and civic organizations, along with a conference facility. Pineland Farms and its Equestrian Center are major facilities nearby.
Daigle is the principal village in the town, which is located just south of Fort Kent on Maine Route 161 near Daigle Pond. Boat launching facilities are available on the small chain of First Lake, Second Lake, and Third Lake in the southwest corner of the town. A section of Maine’s Public Reserved Land, the New Canada lot, is a 1,000-acre original public lot located north of the Eagle Lake Unit.
(1899-1988) was a prominent sculptor, painter, and printmaker, born on September 23, 1899, in Pereyaslav, Russia. At the age of five, she came to Rockland with her mother, older brother, and younger sister to join her father, Isaac Berliawsky, who had immigrated a few years earlier. Although she took the commercial course at Rockland High…
(1907-1962), son of John E. Nelson and a U.S. Representative, was born in Waterville on July 2, 1907. He is the son of another U.S. Representative John E. Nelson. Charles Pembroke Nelson graduated from Cony High School in Augusta in 1924, Colby College, Waterville in 1928, and from Harvard Law School in 1931. Nelson was…
(1904-1995) was a self-sufficient organic farmer and author whose life with her husband, Scott Nearing, struck a powerful chord with thousands of people. Later labeled the “back-to-the-land movement,” generations of people, some disenfranchised by McCarthyism, the Vietnam War, and the greed of modern society, adopted new values exemplified by the Nearings and others. These included…
Social and Political Organization An important unit of social organization was the band, a loosely organized collection of people, frequently related family members, who occupied a particular tract of land, moved and camped together, and felt a common identity, including a name for themselves. Several bands comprised a tribe, which, like the band, was loosely…
Located northwest of Ashland and south of Portage Lake on Route 11. Little Machias Lake, through which the Little Machias River runs, is in the northwest corner of the plantation. Nashville hosts two lots of Maine’s Public Reserved Land, of which about 10% of the acreage is reserved for wildlife, with the remainder allocated to timber management and harvesting.
Blessed with ample access to Long Lake, Sebago Lake at the intersection of U.S. Route 302 and Maine Routes 11, 35 and 114, Naples has long been a vacation resort community. See photos. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Nathaniel Hawthorne have sung its praises. The Songo Lock, built about 1830 and now shared with the town of Casco, linked Long Pond and Brandy Pond with Sebago Lake
Thompson H. Murch (1838-1886) a U.S. Representative, was born in Hampden on March 29, 1838 and attended the common schools. He spent his early life at sea, learned the stonecutter’s trade and engaged in that occupation for eighteen years. He became editor and publisher of the Granite Cutters’ International Journal in 1877 and secretary of…
Moxie Gore is an unorganized township in Somerset County bordering the east bank of the Kennebec River just above The Forks Plantation. Its odd shape earns it the name “Gore.” Moxie Stream is the outlet for Moxie Pond, which straddles The Forks and East Moxie Township to the southeast. Before joining the Kennebec River, the…
“These are feature films with Maine-related themes or locations. Please note that many titles are not known to survive, or are not available.” — Karan Sheldon, Northeast Historic Film As the Earth Turns, 1934 Back to the Woods, 1918 Beans of Egypt Maine, The, 1994 Bed and Breakfast, 1992 Behind the Door, 1919 Behind Masks,…
The trail to West Peak on Baldpate Mountain begins at the parking lot in Grafton Notch State Park. Located in Grafton Township on Route 26 in Oxford County, this part of the Appalachian Trail resumes at a small kiosk. The hiker moves through the woods for a short distance, then crosses the road to pick…
Maine has 711 mountains over 1,000 feet high. These are the 20 highest, including the vertical distance to be climbed from base to peak. Actual hiking distances are, of course, longer. Name County Height Above Sea Level Climb Above Base Katahdin Piscataquis 5,267 4,674 Sugarloaf Franklin 4,237 2,931 Old Speck Oxford 4,180 2,690 Crocker Franklin…
The village of West Mount Vernon, with a small church and fire department, is located at the north end of Echo Lake and the south end of Taylor Pond. See photos. In 1926, the novelist Erskine Caldwell moved to an old farmhouse in Mount Vernon, where he lived until the early 1930’s. The main village, Mount Vernon, is in the north of the town on Minnehonk Lake.
The town is located on Mount Desert Island, between Bar Harbor and Tremont. See map and photos. Several granite quarries were located in the town. In 1902 the Quarrymen’s Protective Union was organized.
Home to the village of Shin Pond, which lies between Lower and Upper Shin Pond, the town is served by Maine Route 159, the Shin Pond Road. See photos. Mount Chase, the mountain, rises 2,440 feet in the eastern edge of the town and dominates the horizon there.
The town hosts the Wyman Hydroelectric Station, with its impressive Wyman Dam and its consequence: Wyman Lake, a bulge in the Kennebec River extending about six miles to the north between Moscow and Pleasant Ridge. See photos. Bingham and Moscow constitute a single population center at the junction of U.S. Route 201 (leading north to the Province of Quebec).
The Bates-Morse Mountain Conservation Area is located off Route 216 in Phippsburg. A parking lot is available but no restroom facilities are provided. Managed by Bates College, it includes a spectacular view of the winding Sprague River exiting the Sprague River Salt Marsh and entering the Atlantic Ocean. According to Andrea Brann, In 1793, Daniel…