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Lumbermen and trappers first set up camps in the area in the s. The first settlers came to what is now Caribou in the s. The dispute over the international boundary delayed settlement of the area until after the signing of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty in With peace restored, European settlers arrived in gradually-increasing numbers beginning in In , it annexed Eaton, Sheridan and Forestville plantations.
On February 26 of that year its name was changed to Caribou, only to revert to Lyndon on March 9. On February 8, , Caribou was finally confirmed as the town's permanent name. Two enduring mysteries are the reason for the original name of Lyndon, and the reasons for the town's name being subsequently changed back and forth between Lyndon and Caribou.
Caribou was the "jumping off" point for a large influx of settlers who immigrated directly from Sweden in , and settled the nearby " Swedish colony. This began a boom period which lasted well into the s. Caribou became the largest potato shipping hub in the world, and had many related industries.
Nearby to the northeast, Loring Air Force Base opened in the early s near Limestone , with bomber and tanker aircraft of the Strategic Air Command. It provided a major economic boost to the area, with construction starting in on "Limestone Army Air Field. That, along with closure of the base in , contributed to a decline in population in the s and s. In September , Caribou was the lift-off location of the first successful solo balloon crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by Colonel Joseph Kittinger. This site includes a large replica of Kittinger's balloon. The Caribou Public Library is a Carnegie library.
Designed in the Romanesque Revival style by local architect Schuyler C. According to the United States Census Bureau , the city has a total area of The county is readily accessible by two major highways; Interstate 95 from the south and the Trans-Canada Highway New Brunswick Route 2 from the north and east. In sparsely populated Aroostook County, Caribou is at the hub of spokes serving the area via U. In , a bypass was completed just outside the urban limits.
Caribou has a municipal airport , with full east-west and north-south runways. It is primarily used for corporate, hobby, and Civil Air Patrol usage. Seaports are also close by in coastal Maine, New Brunswick , and Quebec. Given the city's economic and cultural ties with the Canadian provinces of Quebec and New Brunswick, cross-border partnerships and relationships are often a common facet in many businesses.
On average, the driest month is February, and the wettest month is July. In Caribou and throughout Aroostook County, the two major agricultural crops are potatoes and broccoli. Aroostook County is renowned for its round white potatoes. The potato crop is used for seed, table stock, and processed potato products. Aroostook County is the largest grower of broccoli on the East Coast. Other important agricultural crops grown in Caribou include blueberries, hay , oats , and alternative crops on a smaller scale.
Cattle and dairy farming are a growing segment of the agricultural landscape. The high volume of activity results in the growth of related agri-business. Farm implement sales and services and the development of several area processing plants are examples of the influence agriculture has on the local economy. Bangor had certain disadvantages compared to other East Coast ports, including its rival Portland, Maine. Being on a northern river, its port froze during the winter, and it could not take the largest ocean-going ships.
The comparative lack of settlement in the forested hinterland also gave it a comparatively small home market. In the first ocean-going iron-hulled steamship in the U. She was built by the Harlan and Hollingsworth firm of Wilmington, Delaware in , and was intended to take passengers between Bangor and Boston. On her second voyage, however, in , she burned to the waterline off Castine. She was rebuilt at Bath , returned briefly to her earlier route, but was soon purchased by the U.
Bangor continued to prosper as the pulp and paper industry replaced lumbering, and railroads replaced shipping. The firm won a diploma for a shingle-making machine the following year. Sargent invented the first automotive snow plow. Sargent patented the device and the firm manufactured it for a national market. A potential advantage that has always eluded exploitation is the city's location between the port city of Halifax , Nova Scotia , and the rest of Canada as well as New York. As early as the s, the city promoted a Halifax-to-New York railroad, via Bangor, as the quickest connection between North America and Europe when combined with steamship service between Britain and Halifax.
Grant officiating at the inauguration, but commerce never lived up to the potential. More recent attempts to capture traffic between Halifax and Montreal by constructing an East—West Highway through Maine have also come to naught.
Night Train to Maine's Plantation 13 File Size: KB; Print Length: 13 pages; Publisher: Burt Creations (July 5, ); Publication Date: July 5, ; Sold by. (32 townships, 3 plantations and a couple of organized towns) is told briefly, but separately. . This would be the north line of townships 8 – 13 listed above. Machias was settled .. Mr. Bohannon's in Alexander the night and paid 75 cents each.” .. railroad. Washington County had 65 sawmills in and in
Most overland traffic between the two parts of Canada continues to travel north of Maine rather than across it. Major fires struck the downtown in , [27] , [28] and , [29] the last resulting in the erection of the Adams-Pickering Block. The area was rebuilt, and in the process became a showplace for a diverse range of architectural styles, including the Mansard style , Beaux Arts , Greek Revival and Colonial Revival , [6] and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Great Fire of Historic District.
The destruction of downtown landmarks such as the old city hall and train station in the late s Urban Renewal Program is now considered to have been a huge planning mistake. It ushered in a decline of the city center that was accelerated by the construction of the Bangor Mall in and subsequent big-box stores on the city's outskirts.
The recent re-development of the city's waterfront has also helped re-focus cultural life in the historic center. Bangor is on the banks of the Penobscot River, close enough to the Atlantic Ocean to be influenced by tides. Upstream, the Penobscot River drainage basin occupies 8, square miles in northeastern Maine.
Flooding is most often caused by a combination of precipitation and snowmelt. Ice jams can exacerbate high flow conditions and cause acute localized flooding. Conditions favorable for flooding typically occur during the spring months. In an ice jam formed below Bangor Village raising the water 10 to 12 feet above the normal highwater mark [33] and in the freshet caused the Maine Central Railroad Company rails between Bangor and Vanceboro to be covered to a depth of several feet.
Both resulted from mid-December freshets that cleared the upper river of ice, followed by cold that produced large volumes of frazil ice or slush which was carried by high flows forming a major ice jam in the lower river. In March of both years, a dynamic breakup of ice ran into the jam and flooded downtown Bangor.
Though no lives were lost and the city recovered quickly, the and ice jam floods were economically devastating, according to the Army Corps analysis. Both floods occurred with multiple dams in place and little to no ice-breaking in the lower river. The United States Coast Guard began icebreaker operations on the Penobscot in the s, preventing the formation of frozen ice jams during the winter and providing an unobstructed path for ice-out in the spring.
In the Groundhog Day gale of a storm surge went up the Penobscot, flooding Bangor for three hours.
About cars were submerged and office workers were stranded until waters receded. There were no reported deaths during this unusual flash flood. As of , Bangor is the third most populous city in Maine, as it has been for more than a century. As of , the estimated population of the Bangor Metropolitan Area which includes Penobscot County is ,, indicating a slight growth rate since , almost all of it accounted for by Bangor.
It had much higher number of physicians per capita vs. Historically Bangor received many immigrants as it industrialized. Irish-Catholic and later Jewish immigrants eventually became established members of the community, along with many migrants from Atlantic Canada.
Of the black citizens who lived in Bangor in , over a third were originally from Canada. As of the census [3] of , there were 33, people, 14, households, and 7, families residing in the city. The population density was There were 15, housing units at an average density of The racial makeup of the city was Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1. There were 14, households of which The average household size was 2.
The median age in the city was The gender makeup of the city was Major employers in the region include: Bangor is the largest market town, distribution center, transportation hub, and media center in a five-county area whose population tops , and which includes Penobscot, Piscataquis , Hancock , Aroostook , and Washington counties.
Bangor's City Council has approved a resolution opposing the sale of sweat-shop -produced clothing in local stores. Outdoor activities in the Bangor City Forest and other nearby parks, forests, and waterways include hiking, sailing, canoeing, hunting, fishing, skiing, and snowmobiling. Bangor Raceway at the Bass Park Civic Center and Auditorium offers live, pari-mutuel harness racing from May through July and then briefly in the fall.
Hollywood Slots, operated by Penn National Gaming , is a slot machine facility. In , it was authorized to add table games. Created in as a commercial field, it was taken over by the U. Army just before World War II. The center controlled the over-the-horizon radar 's transmitter in Moscow, Maine , and receiver in Columbia Falls, Maine.
In the year , 3, lumbering ships passed by the docks. East Coast and Europe, and in the s and '80s it was a refuelling stop, until the development of longer-range jets in the s. Caribou is also home to Echoes magazine, a quarterly publication about rural culture and heritage focused primarily on northern Maine. An Architectural History Orono: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. In , local public officials, journalists, doctors, policemen, photographers, restaurateurs, TV personalities and Grammy-winning composers came together to record the YouTube video "How to Say Bangor". The Queen City of the East.
Many buildings and monuments are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The city has also had a municipal Historic Preservation Commission since the early s. Victorian , and Colonial Revival houses. Bangor has a large fiberglass-over-metal statue of mythical lumberman Paul Bunyan by Normand Martin Bangor was home to two minor league baseball teams affiliated with the Northeast League: Vince McMahon promoted his first professional wrestling event in Bangor in The Penobscot is a salmon -fishing river; the Penobscot Salmon Club traditionally sent the first fish caught to the President of the United States.
From to , low fish stocks resulted in a ban on salmon fishing. The population was 1, at the census , making Eastport the least-populous city in Maine. Eastport is the easternmost city in the United States although the nearby town of Lubec is the easternmost municipality. The native Passamaquoddy Tribe has called this area home for at least 10, years. Some archeologists estimate the habitation at 20, years. Croix colony founded by the French explorer Samuel de Champlain in Near present-day Calais, the unsuccessful Saint Croix Island Acadia settlement predates the first successful English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia , by three years.
On June 25, , Champlain and his men spent a long and severe winter on St. Croix Island with no fresh water and diminished supplies. Two-fifths of the men died of scurvy , and the colony moved across the Bay of Fundy to Port Royal in present-day Nova Scotia. Fishermen and traders visited the area in the 17th century.
Moose Island was first settled in by James Cochrane of Newburyport, Massachusetts , who would be joined by other fishermen from Newburyport and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Lubec, on the mainland, was set off and incorporated as a town on June 21, From to , the town was a center of extensive two-way smuggling during the Embargo Act imposed by President Thomas Jefferson. In , Fort Sullivan was erected atop a village hill, but it was captured by a British fleet under command of Sir Thomas Hardy on July 11, , during the War of as part of the initiative to establish the colony of New Ireland.
England claimed that Moose Island was on the British side of the international border which had been determined in Nevertheless, the town was returned to United States' control in The boundary between the U.
In Eastport was the second largest trading port in the country after New York City. Industries included a grain mill, box factory and carding mill. But the island's economy was primarily directed at the sea. With tides of about 25 feet 7. The first sardine factory was built here about The population grew with the emergence of the sardine fishery and related canning businesses, which studded the shoreline by the end of the 19th century. By , the town contained 13 sardine factories, which operated day and night during the season, and produced approximately 5, cases per week.
About men, women and children worked in the plants. Indeed, the city went bankrupt in In , the Groundhog Day Gale destroyed many structures along the waterfront. Today, catching fish remains the principal industry, although tourism has become important as well. Eastport is a port of entry. An international ferry crosses to Deer Island , New Brunswick , during the summer months. Each 4th of July , the city becomes a destination for thousands of celebrants.
Navy ships have docked there during the 4th of July celebration for many years.