The Bodwell Water Power Company Plant is a historic structure and landmark on the banks of the Penobscot River. The Sunkhaze Meadows National Wildlife Refuge combines bog, marsh, floodplain forest and the state’s second largest peatland. The town, across the river from Old Town, is a moderately growing residential area near the greater Bangor area and the University of Maine in Orono.
Medford Center village is the site of the very modest town office, the park with the veterans memorial, and a small church. See photos. Cold Stream, which runs through the village, provided power for a grist mill in the nineteenth century.
As with many rural Maine towns, Mars Hill is a community of pickup trucks as an essential tool of the farm economy. See photos. It shares a main street, U.S. Route 1, with neighboring Blaine. Mars Hill is located on the Prestile Stream where U.S. Route 1 forks to Presque Isle and Route 1A leads to Fort Fairfield. Established in the 1960’s, the Big Rock Ski Area on Mars Hill was purchased in 2000 by the Maine Winter Sports Center.
are the largest of rodents. They have flat, scaly tails, and large front teeth. Beavers use their teeth to cut down and dismember small trees to use in construction projects: their homes (lodges) and dams to surround their lodges with water. Access to the lodges is underwater, so most bothersome animals cannot get in. They…
Earlier called Swansfield, it was named after Theodore Lyman of York, a successful businessman and Boston merchant. Goodwins Mills is a village straddling the town lines of Lyman and Dayton. The first saw and grist mills were located there in 1782. Lyman’s United Methodist Church was established in 1840. Dotted with ponds, the area is a rural commuter community with easy access to Sanford and the Biddeford-Saco areas..
The town is named for John Lovell (or Lovewell), the hero of the Battle of Lovewell’s Pond in 1725, in which he was killed but the remaining Abenaki people abandoned the area. See photos. One of the lodges at Kezar Lake was owned by stage and screen star Rudy Vallee. Center Lovell, in the shadow of Sabattus Mountain, is the primary village, located on the shore of Middle Bay.
For years Livermore Falls was a thriving paper mill town. See video and photos. Recently, the employment future has become less certain, as shown by the age of the housing stock. Pikes Corner at Route 133 and 106 is in the East Livermore area, in Livermore Falls. The town is directly north of the Lewiston-Auburn area. An extensive logging and manufacturing operation produces wood pallets.
Lisbon Falls, on the Androscoggin River, is the largest village; Lisbon Village, on the Sabattus River, is the next largest. See photos. A mill town harnessing the power of these rivers through most of the 20 century, Lisbon’s economy has turned more toward services and light industry as the mills have closed. Stephen King attended high school here.
In the 19th century, it was a magnet for summer visitors to Parmachene Lake, a hunting and fishing resort. See photos. The southern end of Aziscohos Lake offers campsites and fishing in the area known as Wilsons Mills. The Aziscohos Dam spills water into the Magalloway River. A 93-foot Covered Bridge, built in 1901 has been closed to traffic since 1985.
The main village is located on the eastern end of Kingsbury Pond along Maine Route 16, which continues east through Happy Corner to Abbot Village in the town of Abbot.
in York County, incorporated 1653 as Cape Porpoise. See photos. After early white settlers were driven away by Indian raids, it was reorganized as Arundel in 1718. In 1821 its name was changed to Kennebunk Port. It has long been an attraction for tourists and summer residents. Well-known residents included writers Booth Tarkington and Kenneth L. Roberts.
Abandoned granite quarries and clay banks where bricks were made suggest the early economic activities of the area. See photos. Several fine farm houses and barns have survived to recall the great heritage of the town. See images below from the Library of Congress of the old cattle pound.
Settled in 1783, Industry’s main villages are Allens Mills, at the southern end of Clearwater Pond, and West Mills. The mills produced wood and leather products, tools and flour. See photos. Goodridge Corner school, the “little red schoolhouse,” is the home of the town’s historical society.
William Sewall became a wildlife guide and companion to Theodore Roosevelt in the 1870′s. The town has frontage on almost half of Pleasant Lake. See photos. The nearby Walker Settlement hosts a golf course and residential development near the lake. Several large homes recall the heady days when potato was king in the County. One of those was that of Governor Carl E. Milliken. Island Falls has had industry in the form of lumber mills, grist mills and a starch factory.
A growing community, its population has consistently expanded over the past forty years. From 2000 to 2010 alone it grew by nearly 18%. See photos and video. By 1847 a wood products mill, known as Scribner’s Mill, was in operation. An effort to restore it is underway. Just north of Naples, Harrison has substantial frontage on Long Lake, which it shares with Bridgton.
Harmony has substantial frontage on Great Moose Lake and the Sebasticook River which flows into it from Mainstream Pond. Boat launch facilities are available at the Lake and the Pond. See photos. U.S. Representative Clyde H. Smith (husband of Margaret Chase Smith) was born here.
Helen Hamlin (1917-2004), author of Nine Mile Bridge: Three Years in the Maine Woods and Pines, Potatoes and People: A Story of Aroostook, was born Helen Leidy in Fort Kent. She developed a great love of the wilderness and adventure as the daughter and granddaughter to Maine fish and game wardens. She summered on Cross…
Named for the German city, and bombed by the British in 1814, Frankfort was once a shipbuilding community on the Penobscot River. Granite cutting and shipping was an important industry up to the early 20th century. Mount Waldo supplied the product and Marsh Bay, in the Penobscot River, provided the means of shipping it.
[FLAG-staff] plantation was formally organized on March 5, 1895, though it had been organized for election purposes in 1851, 1865 and 1870. Flagstaff and nearby Dead River Plantation were inundated with water from the Central Maine Power Company’s Long Falls Dam on the Dead River in 1949, after a planned and complete relocation of its…
Settled in 1763, it has relied on lumbering, shipbuilding, and industry to support its economy. The classic Grand Theater has been saved as an active movie and performance space. See photos. At the confluence of seven highway routes, the city is a shopping center for the area and summer tourism. The Col. John Black Mansion, a modified Georgian design, was home to the land agent for William Bingham.