Kings Mills is one of the three villages that comprise the Lincoln County town of Whitefield, Maine. Formed into the Town of Whitefield in 1809, each of the villages retained it separate identity, and functioned essentially as self-sufficient entities well into the 20th century. The Whitefield Union Hall, constructed in 1900, is a key element in the social history of Kings Mills.
The property on the edge of Damariscotta Lake in Nobleboro known as Chimney Farm has been immortalized beautifully in the writings of Henry Beston and Elizabeth Coatsworth Beston. Taken together their literary careers spanning over a hundred years. Their genres - children's stories, nature writing, historical fiction, poetry and local documentary - cover much ground and have garnered accolades from readers and critics of disparate voices.
Significant in the development of Maine's outdoor image were the sporting camps that catered to those who sought an authentic "wilderness experience" in the later decades of the nineteenth century. These camps, which were invariably located upon rivers and lakes or set in vast tracts of forest, helped to foster this image by developing isolated retreats that offered excellent hunting and/or fishing.
As was the custom among the Swedish immigrants to northern Aroostook County, the home that Pehr J. Jacobson erected was of log construction, and this house is one of several examples that help to illustrate the diversity of interior and exterior plan utilized by the immigrants in New Sweden and surrounding towns. Jacobson, who arrived during the initial establishment of Maine's Swedish colony in 1870, probably built his house shortly thereafter.
The former Sanford Town Hall, located in Springvale, was the second of three civic buildings built to serve as the seat of Sanford's local government. As a secondary village of the Town of Sanford, Springvale has a history that is both separated from and connected to the surrounding communities. The former Sanford Town Hall is a significant remnant of the period between the Civil War and the first World War, when Springvale's main streets were at the center of the village, both politically, socially and commercially.
Erected in 1829 by an as yet unidentified builder and altered three times within the next century, the Mercer Union Meetinghouse is a transitional Federal and Greek Revival style frame edifice that is detailed on the exterior with Gothic Revival style features and on the interior within Greek Revival mouldings and bold grain painting. It was placed in the National Register of Historic Places for its significant architecture and in recognition of the excellent decorative grain painting on the interior.
The Camden Great Fire Historic District encompasses 21 buildings along Elm and Main Streets, on the west side of the Camden Harbor. The Megunticook River runs under the district at its north end and several of the buildings on the east side of the district are actually built on the bridge and over the river or its catch basin. Within the district boundaries is the previously listed Richardson Romanesque Camden Opera House, fifteen substantial, brick, commercial buildings, and seven smaller, frame commercial buildings.
The Sodergren Farm in Stockholm was settled in 1884 by the Sodergren family, who, like many Swedes in the decade before, had immigrated to the Swedish colony of Aroostook County in northern Maine. The farm contains a modest, but little altered, one-story log house set on a slight knoll and surrounded by fields that the family has tended for almost 125 years.
Garland Farm was the last home of renowned landscape architect Beatrix Farrand. At the age of 83, she dismantled her ancestral home, Reef Point, and moved herself and her favorite plants to a new apartment built onto the house of her close friends and co-workers, Amy and Lewis Garland. There she installed an ?instant? and private garden, placing her beloved heaths and heathers and other perennial flowers in a walled enclosure outside her quarters and dispersing her prized bushes, shrubs and trees around the grounds of the vernacular farmhouse.
Battery Steele, located on the former Peaks Island Military Reservation on Peaks Island, in Portland, Maine represents the most advanced form of Coastal Defense installation developed by the United States Army during World War II. Due to its location as an outer island in the bay with a clear view across the North Atlantic, Peaks Island was chosen as the principal site for Casco Bay?s defensive system. The battery was armed with two 16? guns capable of firing a 2000 pound shot 26 miles to sea.