Visiting Bangor

City History

Incorporated in 1791, Bangor is named for an Irish hymn entitled “Bangor,” said to be a favorite of pastor Seth Noble who traveled to Boston with the initial intention of naming the town Sunbury.

Until recently, it was generally believed that the earliest record of European exploration was found in the journals of French explorer Samuel de Champlain. In 1604, Champlain established a short-lived colony on an island off the Maine coast and explored the Penobscot River to the head of tide at Bangor. However, according to Harvard historian Samuel Eliot Morrison’s 1971 book, The European Discovery of America, Estavan Gomez, a Portuguese mariner who had sailed as a captain in Magellan’s round-the-world fleet, sailed the Spanish caravel La Anunciada up the Penobscot to the future site of Bangor in 1525 under a commission from King Charles V of Spain to find the legendary northwest passage to the Orient.

Fishing and fur trading drew early settlers to the coast of Maine. European interests in the New World also encouraged settlements. France colonized the area north and northeast of the Penobscot Valley, while more prosperous English colonies south of the area included the Massachusetts Bay colony. France’s defeat at the hands of the English on the Plains of Abraham in Quebec in 1759 consolidated English domination in what was to become the northeastern United States.

After 1759, much of today’s Eastern Maine became a province of Massachusetts, a situation that persisted until 1820 when Maine became an independent state. During the 19th Century, Maine’s vast forests, offering supplies of lumber and naval stores, brought unprecedented wealth to the region. By the 1850’s, Bangor was considered the lumber capital of the world, was one of the busiest ports on the East Coast, and was heavily engaged in shipbuilding and commerce. By the twentieth century, however, the shipbuilding industry had been transformed by the advent of the age of steam and steel, and Bangor’s sawmills and shipyards gave way to today’s dominant forest industry – pulp and paper.

Today, Bangor remains the commercial and social center of Northern, Central, and Eastern Maine. It has become the region’s largest center of retail and service businesses, and a center for government, education, and employment. Offering a widely diversified economy, Bangor has transcended its traditional roots in forest products and shipbuilding and today maintains its position as one of Maine’s major urban centers.

GEOGRAPHY

The State of Maine is 30,933 square miles in size, representing half of the total area occupied by the six New England states. Its highest point, Mt. Katahdin, is in the northwestern part of the state and is 5,268 feet above sea level. The state boasts 2,282 square miles of lakes, streams, and rivers and has 3,478 miles of tidal shoreline.

Prior to European settlement, Maine was nearly all forested. Agricultural and industrial development reduced the forest cover to about 65 percent of the state’s land area by the mid-nineteenth century. With the subsequent decline of agriculture in the New England region, trees reoccupied as much as 78 percent of the land by 1930 and nearly 90 percent by 1990. Today, Maine is the most heavily forested state in the nation.

All of Maine’s largest rivers originate on the Appalachian plateau in the western part of the state. These rivers, once the primary conduit for carrying logs from the forests to the mills, are now the domain of fisherman and whitewater rafters. Industrial uses persist, however, including the production of hydroelectric power and forest-related products such as pulp and paper. These rivers include the Saco, Androscoggin, Kennebec, Penobscot, and, to the north, the St. John with its tributaries, the Allagash and Aroostook.

The City of Bangor occupies 34 square miles on the western side of the Penobscot River, 20 miles northwest of Penobscot Bay. The City is composed of urban, commercial, and industrial areas as well as numerous residential neighborhoods. Some rural areas remain within the city limits, and the city boasts tracts of forest and farm lands that abut both urban and suburban developments. In addition to the Penobscot River, which defines part of the City’s eastern boundary, the Kenduskeag Stream flows through the city, meeting the Penobscot in the downtown area.