Maritime Communities

Unidentified woman (perhaps Aunt Annie Adams) looking out possibly from the Montgomery residence in East Boothbay, Maine. A four masted schooner lies in the background.

Postcard image of Fort Point Lighthouse and the resort at Fort Point. Built in the 1870s, the resort was first called the Wassaumkeag Hotel, then Fort Point House, then The Woodcliff and Fort Point Hotel. It burned on June 7, 1898.

Steamer Penobscot entering Belfast harbor, on the Bangor to Boston route.

The reliable steamer Mount Desert operated on the Rockland to Mount Desert line from 1879 to 1904. This view may be from Stonington, as Mount Desert heads east towards Mount Desert Island and Frenchmans Bay.

When the Penobscot Marine Museum was founded in 1936, the town of Searsport gave the museum its original Town Hall building, built in 1845. It was the museum's only building until the museum purchased the Merithew House, in 1950.

The winter of 1905 was hard, but not as hard as the winter before. Temperatures seldom rose above 12 degrees Fahrenheit. From early February until mid March, much of the upper Penobscot Bay was frozen solid, with 5 inches or more of ice. Steamboat travel was suspended. Newspaper reports beginning mid February told of people walking from Castine to Belfast and of an "ice bridge" to Islesboro on which teams pulled wagons and sleighs. The ice sometimes gave out: one man lost a boiler and engine and his horses when they broke through the ice going from Bucksport to Winterport.

Real estate development for summer residents and tourists started in the last quarter of the nineteenth century as steamboats made travel from Boston easy. For the Penobscot bound, overnight boats from Boston stopped in Rockland by dawn after leaving Boston in the evening and were in Bangor by mid day. From the major Penobscot towns of the western shore, travelers transferred to smaller steamers for Mount Desert and smaller towns and islands.

Unidentified man sitting in wicker chair in front of a ship portrait and a half model of a sailing vessel.