Maine Memory Network

Summer Camps

Maine is home to dozens of summer-long youth camps and untold numbers of day camps that take advantage of water, woods, and fresh air. While the children, counselors, and other staff come to Maine in the summer, the camps live on throughout the year and throughout the lives of many of the campers.

Umbazooksus & Beyond

Visitors to the Maine woods in the early twentieth century often recorded their adventures in private diaries or journals and in photographs. Their remembrances of canoeing, camping, hunting and fishing helped equate Maine with wilderness.

Summer Folk: The Postcard View

Vacationers, "rusticators," or tourists began flooding into Maine in the last quarter of the 19th century. Many arrived by train or steamer. Eventually, automobiles expanded and changed the tourist trade, and some vacationers bought their own "cottages."

Hiking, Art and Science: Portland's White Mountain Club

In 1873, a group of men, mostly from Portland, formed the second known hiking club in the U.S., the White Mountain Club of Portland, to carry out their scientific interests, their love of hiking and camaraderie, and their artistic interests in painting and drawing the features of several of the White Mountains.

Designing Acadia

For one hundred years, Acadia National Park has captured the American imagination and stood as the most recognizable symbol of Maine’s important natural history and identity. This exhibit highlights Maine Memory content relating to Acadia and Mount Desert Island.

From French Canadians to Franco-Americans

French Canadians who emigrated to the Lewiston-Auburn area faced discrimination as children and adults -- such as living in "Little Canada" tenements and being ridiculed for speaking French -- but also adapted to their new lives and sustained many cultural traditions.

Hunting Season

Maine's ample woods historically provided numerous game animals and birds for hunters seeking food, fur, or hides. The promotion of hunting as tourism and concerns about conservation toward the end of the nineteenth century changed the nature of hunting in Maine.

Putting Men to Work, Saving Trees

While many Mainers were averse to accepting federal relief money during the Great Depression of the 1930s, young men eagerly joined the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of President Franklin Roosevelt's most popular programs. The Maine Forest Service supervised the work of many of the camps.

We Used to be "Normal": A History of F.S.N.S.

Farmington's Normal School -- a teacher-training facility -- opened in 1863 and, over the decades, offered academic programs that included such unique features as domestic and child-care training, and extra-curricular activities from athletics to music and theater.

Sagadahoc County through the Eastern Eye

The Eastern Illustrating and Publishing Company of Belfast, Maine. employed photographers who traveled by company vehicle through New England each summer, taking pictures of towns and cities, vacation spots and tourist attractions, working waterfronts and local industries, and other subjects postcard recipients might enjoy. The cards were printed by the millions in Belfast into the 1940s.

Les Raquetteurs

In the early 1600s, French explorers and colonizers in the New World quickly adopted a Native American mode of transportation to get around during the harsh winter months: the snowshoe. Most Northern societies had some form of snowshoe, but the Native Americans turned it into a highly functional item. French settlers named snowshoes "raquettes" because they resembled the tennis racket then in use.

Among the Lungers: Treating TB

Tuberculosis -- or consumption as it often was called -- claimed so many lives and so threatened the health of communities that private organizations and, by 1915, the state, got involved in TB treatment. The state's first tuberculosis sanatorium was built on Greenwood Mountain in Hebron and introduced a new philosophy of treatment.

Music in Maine - Music Education

"Eastern Music Camp Eastern Music Camp Click to learn more about the Eastern Music Camp Music teacher Dorothy Harlow Marden of Waterville and…"

Poland Spring: Summering in Fashion

During the Gilded Age at the end of the nineteenth century, Americans sought to leave increasing urban, industrialized lives for the health and relaxation of the country. The Poland Spring resort, which offered a beautiful setting, healing waters, and many amenities, was one popular destination.

Music in Maine - Bluegrass Music

"… were totally immersed—meeting other musicians, camping and playing music together, and forming lifelong friendships."

Doing Good: Medical Stories of Maine

Throughout Maine’s history, individuals have worked to improve and expand medical care, not only for the health of those living in Maine, but for many around the world who need care and help.

Moosehead Steamboats

After the canoe, steamboats became the favored method of transportation on Moosehead Lake. They revolutionized movement of logs and helped promote tourism in the region.

Music in Maine - Music in Maine

"… content from eighteen collaborators, and is organized by the themes of MAKE, HEAR, and PLAY, exploring musical experiences over thousands of years…"

Music in Maine - Music Makers

"Emma played piano, their daughter Pearl the pump organ, and Pearl’s husband Nathan Noble, accompanied Dunham on bass fiddle."

Music in Maine - Sacred Music

"… and less expensive than pianos, with a loud organ sound. Parishioners carried this fold-up melodeon to West Cumberland Methodist Church each Sunday…"

The Sanitary Commission: Meeting Needs of Soldiers, Families

The Sanitary Commission, formed soon after the Civil War began in the spring of 1861, dealt with the health, relief needs, and morale of soldiers and their families. The Maine Agency helped families and soldiers with everything from furloughs to getting new socks.

Music in Maine - Military Marching Bands

"Jacob S. Paine (1810-1856) founded the first organized band in Portland around 1833, named “The Portland Band.” By 1843, members recruited New…"

Music in Maine - Community and School Marching Bands

"… Indian School in Pennsylvania from 1902 to 1904, organized to assimilate Indigenous youth with a mission to “Kill the Indian in him, and save the…"

Music in Maine - Rock and Roll, Punk, and Elvis

"Local promoters who organized events were moonlighting from a “day job”, paper tickets were sold for a few bucks ($2.50 for Jimi Hendrix) at the…"