Maine
Maine, USA · Acadia · the Mid-Coast
6 places pinned — click any one for its story.
The place
Maine is the wild, rockbound corner of New England — a coast of granite headlands, spruce forest, lighthouses, and lobster boats, with more coastline than California once you count every cove. Down east, the summer light and cold clean water have drawn painters and rusticators for a century and a half.
Teddy and I road-tripped the coast in August 2023 — the peaks and carriage roads of Acadia, the schooner harbors of Camden and Rockland, and lobster rolls the whole way down to Portland.
Places I visited
History & facts for each spot — with a “then & now” archival photo where one exists. Every one has its own page; open it for the full write-up and all the photos.
The rugged granite coast of Mount Desert Island — Cadillac Mountain (the first place in the U.S. to see sunrise), Jordan Pond, Thunder Hole, and carriage roads built by the Rockefellers. New England's only national park.
Full history & photos →Read more on Wikipedia →Archival photo: Green Mountain Railway, Mt. Desert, Me, by B. Bradley 2 (cropped and converted to black and white) — Wikimedia Commons
The gateway town to Acadia, a Gilded-Age summer resort of the wealthy on Frenchman Bay — lobster shacks, schooners, and grand old 'cottages.'
Full history & photos →Read more on Wikipedia →Archival photo: "Kenarden Lodge," John Stewart Kennedy house, Shore Path, Bar Harbor, Maine. LOC 7535977692 — Wikimedia Commons
The picture-postcard mid-coast harbor 'where the mountains meet the sea,' full of windjammer schooners, with Mount Battie rising right above the bay.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: Launching of the 5-masted schooner John B. Prescott on January 13, 1899 — Wikimedia Commons
The working harbor and lobster capital next door, home to the Farnsworth Art Museum and the Wyeth family's paintings, and a breakwater lighthouse nearly a mile out.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: Public Library, Rockland, ME — Wikimedia Commons
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Bath
The 'City of Ships' on the Kennebec — four centuries of shipbuilding, still turning out destroyers at Bath Iron Works, with the Maine Maritime Museum on the riverbank below the yard.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: Bath, looking south from Beacon Street. (Bath, Me.), from Robert N. Dennis collection of stereoscopic views — Wikimedia Commons
Maine's largest city — a working waterfront of cobblestoned Old Port, lighthouses at Cape Elizabeth, and one of the best food scenes in the country.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: Old Portland City Hall — Wikimedia Commons