Maine Memory Network

Shore Path, Bar Harbor, ca. 1915

Contributed by: Jesup Memorial Library Date: circa 1880 Location: Bar Harbor Media: Postcard

Shore Acres Hotel, Lamoine, 1927

Contributed by: Lamoine Historical Society Date: 1927 Location: Lamoine Media: Photographic print

Cushing property, N. Shore, Long Island, Portland, 1924

Owner in 1924: Charles E. Cushing Use: Hotel

Cushing property, N. Shore, Long Island, Portland, 1924

Owner in 1924: Charles E. Cushing Use: Stable

Camden Shores Front Park Planting Plan, Camden, 1931

Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: 1931 Location: Camden Client: unknown Architect: Olmsted Brothers

E. S. Davis Seashore Cottage, Brunswick, 1878

Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: 1878 Location: Brunswick Client: W. D. Pennell Architect: Stevens and Coombs

History in Motion: The Era of the Electric Railways

Street railways, whether horse-drawn or electric, required the building of trestles and tracks. The new form of transportation aided industry, workers, vacationers, and other travelers.

Cape Elizabeth Shipwrecks

The rocky coastline of Cape Elizabeth has sent many vessels to their watery graves.

Mount Desert Island: Shaped by Nature - Permanent Settlement

"Somes built a log cabin along the shore in what is now known as Somesville. Richardson built his home further down the shore near what is now called…"

Lubec, Maine - Building the Roosevelt Bridge to Campobello - Page 2 of 3

"… initial trestlework extending from the Lubec shore at low tide, the water reflecting the calm before tide reversal."

The Point
by Norma K. Salway

In the summer, on the eastern shore of Songo, kids dove from a leaning tree

A Splash of Water
by Marilyn Weymouth Seguin

Reminisce of a lifetime on Little Sebago Lake

Longfellow Studies: The American Wilderness? How 19th Century American Artists Viewed the Separation Of Civilization and Nature

Grade Level: 9-12 Content Area: Social Studies, Visual & Performing Arts
When European settlers began coming to the wilderness of North America, they did not have a vision that included changing their lifestyle. The plan was to set up self-contained communities where their version of European life could be lived. In the introduction to The Crucible, Arthur Miller even goes as far as saying that the Puritans believed the American forest to be the last stronghold of Satan on this Earth. When Roger Chillingworth shows up in The Scarlet Letter's second chapter, he is welcomed away from life with "the heathen folk" and into "a land where iniquity is searched out, and punished in the sight of rulers and people." In fact, as history's proven, they believed that the continent could be changed to accommodate their interests. Whether their plans were enacted in the name of God, the King, or commerce and economics, the changes always included – and still do to this day - the taming of the geographic, human, and animal environments that were here beforehand. It seems that this has always been an issue that polarizes people. Some believe that the landscape should be left intact as much as possible while others believe that the world will inevitably move on in the name of progress for the benefit of mankind. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby – a book which many feel is one of the best portrayals of our American reality - the narrator, Nick Carraway, looks upon this progress with cynicism when he ends his narrative by pondering the transformation of "the fresh green breast of a new world" that the initial settlers found on the shores of the continent into a modern society that unsettlingly reminds him of something out of a "night scene by El Greco." Philosophically, the notions of progress, civilization, and scientific advancement are not only entirely subjective, but also rest upon the belief that things are not acceptable as they are. Europeans came here hoping for a better life, and it doesn't seem like we've stopped looking. Again, to quote Fitzgerald, it's the elusive green light and the "orgiastic future" that we've always hoped to find. Our problem has always been our stoic belief system. We cannot seem to find peace in the world either as we've found it or as someone else may have envisioned it. As an example, in Miller's The Crucible, his Judge Danforth says that: "You're either for this court or against this court." He will not allow for alternative perspectives. George W. Bush, in 2002, said that: "You're either for us or against us. There is no middle ground in the war on terror." The frontier -- be it a wilderness of physical, religious, or political nature -- has always frightened Americans. As it's portrayed in the following bits of literature and artwork, the frontier is a doomed place waiting for white, cultured, Europeans to "fix" it. Anything outside of their society is not just different, but unacceptable. The lesson plan included will introduce a few examples of 19th century portrayal of the American forest as a wilderness that people feel needs to be hesitantly looked upon. Fortunately, though, the forest seems to turn no one away. Nature likes all of its creatures, whether or not the favor is returned. While I am not providing actual activities and daily plans, the following information can serve as a rather detailed explanation of things which can combine in any fashion you'd like as a group of lessons.