Maine Memory Network

Dr. Oris S. Vickery of Belfast and Herbert M. Bergamini established Camp Quantabacook in Searsmont in 1914. The Handbook of the Best Private Schools in 1915 described it as a "small, well equipped camp" with 15 boys and six counselors that featured salt water cruising. By 1925 it had been renamed Camp Wah-Nah-Gee-Sha.

The campers most likely did their salt water cruising from the related Camp Navajo in Northport, which opened in 1913 with Orrin J. Dickey of Belfast as its president and, later, director. Dickey also operated Belfast's first sightseeing tours by automobile.

Camp Navajo publicity described it as a salt-water camp at which "water sports, deep sea fishing, and cruises through Maine islands are much made of" and "overnight hikes are taken and manual training is taught."

Indian names and themes were popular in many summer camps of the period. Advertisements for Camp Winnecook in Unity, for example, noted that "the boys...are organized into Indian tribes under elected chiefs, and healthy tribal rivalry is stimulated in wood-lore and scout craft, games, athletics and pageantry."

The Windsor Hotel on High Street was a centerpiece of Belfast for over 100 years, outlasting several downtown hotels. It was originally the New England House, opened in 1848 by Luther Coombs in a dwelling.

"No pains or expenditures will be spared in repairing and furnishing the house, erecting outbuildings and fitting them up in a style best calculated to promote the comfort and happiness of the traveling public," he declared. He conducted his business on "strictly temperance principles."

The name was changed to the Windsor Hotel in 1885, and the adjacent tenement building became the hotel annex as business grew. A horse-drawn coach met guests at the steamship wharf.

Benjamin Harrison, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Warren G. Harding were among the hotel's famous guests.

Ads from the 1920s promoting the Windsor Hotel in Belfast, created to appeal to tourists traveling by automobile, described the establishment as a "homelike hotel...known from coast to coast," which served fresh food from nearby farms.

By the 1940s there was angled parking on High Street, a coffee shop with a street-side presence and a lounge and it offered different rates for tourists and commercial businesses.

A spectacular fire destroyed the Windsor Hotel in 1960, two years after the adjacent Colonial Inn burned. The hole they left on High Street was later filled by Pendelton Lane, the Belfast Co-op Store, and a laundromat.

On May 18, 1909 a crowd of 2,000 people gathered at the bunting-draped 1888 Eastern Steamship Company wharf in Belfast to await the arrival and christening of the new steamship Belfast, which had been built at Bath Iron Works.

The 320-foot-long steamer, the largest and most modern of the night boats to Boston, had a steel hull, triple steam turbine engines, and three propellers, which enhanced maneuverability.

The atmosphere was much more somber a year later when, on a foggy May morning, Belfast hit the Bar Harbor-bound ESS steamer J.T. Morse at its berth at Tillson's Wharf in Rockland. The impact made a large gash in the smaller boat, and it sank within minutes. The Morse was raised and sailing a month later.

Belfast was a hub for steamer traffic, and the steamship wharf was a busy place. In addition to carrying passengers to towns around the bay, many boats offered summer excursions to historic sites, entertainment venues, fishing grounds, and other points of interest.

By the 1930s bridges carried vehicles across the Passagassawakeag River in Belfast and the Penobscot River in Bucksport, and the era of steamboats was coming to an end. The Eastern steamship wharf was used for a time as a roller skating rink before it was torn down.

Comfortable, modern travel trailers allowed campers to take some of the amenities of home on the road and offered the flexibility of vacationing in different places. The 1937 Maine: A Guide “Down East, written by workers of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration, described Belfast as "a popular tourist center" and noted that the Belfast City Park had excellent camping and trailer facilities.

Across the Passagassawaukeag River in East Belfast, the Mooring Camping Ground also provided a pleasant place to stay, with grassy grounds, shade trees, and a view of Penobscot Bay.

From 1945 to 1977 Fred and Florence Bastian owned the campground as well as the adjacent Mooring Restaurant and Dairy Joy, which were popular with locals and summer travelers. The campground had many repeat vacationers from across the country.

In the 1950s author Clinton Twiss spent much of one summer there working on The Long, Long Trailer, a book and later a movie with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, about a couple who spends a year traveling across the U.S. in a trailer; the book has a section on Belfast.

The campground continues to operate as The Moorings, with 45 campsites.

Eleanor Roosevelt liked to stop at Perry's Tropical Nut House in Belfast and the College Club Inn in Searsport on her driving trips to the Roosevelt summer home on Campobello Island, New Brunswick.

While she enjoyed shopping for gifts, she was undoubtedly attracted to the curiosities that made the store famous: taxidermied 16-foot, 2,300-pound Florida alligator; gorilla, giraffe, eland, oryx, gnu and lion from darkest Africa; a Rocky Mountain goat; and displays of exotic nuts that rivaled the Smithsonian's collection.

Irving L. Perry, who owned an interest in pecan groves in Florida, opened his Nut House in 1926 with a carload of nuts shipped by rail from Florida. He located his new business in the East Belfast building in which he had previously operated a cigar factory.

Soon he was also selling Brazilian nuts from the Amazon, coconuts in their husks, and curios from his extensive travels.

Joshua Treat bought the business in 1941 and added a giant man-eating clam, curios from the South Pacific, carved elephants, and a horseless carriage to the attractions. The store sold English bone china, Indian baskets, Maine souvenirs, and unusual items that couldn't be purchased elsewhere.

Treat sold Perry's Nut House in 1974. It closed in 1997, and his menagerie was sold at auction. New owners have retrieved some of the animals, and a large carved bear now welcomes customers.

One of Perry's elephants sits atop the Colonial Theater.

In the 1930s, tourists traveling up Route 1 through Waldo County could buy fresh seafood at lobster pounds in Lincolnville Beach, Belfast, and Searsport. All were informal take-out places with outdoor picnic tables.

In Belfast, Bud and Belle Young opened Young's Lobster Pound as an extension of the family's fishing business. They sold steamed lobsters and clams from a small retail building next to their house in East Belfast.

The Youngs' business did well and, with Perry's Nut House, became a Belfast attraction.

In Searsport the popular Parker's Lobster Pound, "where thousands eat lobsters," had an outdoor cooker built of stones from the beach and a large picnic ground. In the early 1950s it was replaced by Kobs Lobster Pound, which bought lobsters from the Youngs.

In 1959 Bud Young built a wharf on the east side of Belfast Bay for his fishing business. He kept it going while the chicken plants were fouling the bay, bringing in clams from Thomaston.

Young's opened a new restaurant by the wharf in 1980, then expanded it with a second floor and stone patio along the water. It lured customers with shore dinners, an aquarium with a capacity of 30,000 lobsters from which diners could choose their own meals, and seating that could accommodate 500 diners.

These girls, wearing their Sunday camp uniforms, pose at Camp Tanglewood on a summer day in the 1940s. They were attending the summer camp that the Bangor-Brewer YWCA ran from 1939 to 1972.

During two-week sessions, the campers, who came from all around Maine, enjoyed nature study, arts and crafts, swimming in the pond, and exploring along the Ducktrap River and beach on Penobscot Bay.

In the 1970s the camp was used by the Bancroft School for emotionally disturbed children and then by the YACC (Young Adult Conservation Corps), which modernized the camp buildings. Starting in 1982 the University of Maine has run a 4-H camp at Tanglewood.

The stone steps the girls are sitting on are a legacy of the Civilian Conservation Corps, which built the camp between 1935 and 1939. The National Park Service worked with Maine Parks to develop a park on 1,500 acres in Camden.

The CCC constructed 48 buildings, including cabins, on the Tanglewood property; the entrance gate, tollhouse, picnic shelters, ski lodge, and other structures in Camden Hills State Park; and trails, roads, steps, and footbridges. They also planted 7,000 native trees.

The cabins and other buildings at Camp Tanglewood, 46 of which survive, were intended to lodge vacationers but were never used for that purpose.

The Governor Brann was Islesboro's first automobile ferry. It was enthusiastically welcomed in 1936 by islanders, who since 1913 had lived with a ban on driving automobiles on Islesboro public roads. The ban was a legislative act enacted under the influence of summer residents who did not want the peacefulness of the island disturbed by the noise of automobiles. After numerous attempts, the ban was lifted on March 17, 1933.

Initially scows carried automobiles across the bay, but beginning June 17, 1936, a ferry, financed owned and managed by the Town of Islesboro, provided service from Lincolnville Beach to Grindle Point on Islesboro.

Named for then-Governor Louis J. Brann, the new vessel was a 65-foot double-ended, wooden-hulled ferry that could carry six cars. The fare for an automobile was $1 and $.25 for a passenger. It soon became obvious that the ferry was too small to meet the demand for service. In 1937, 27 feet were added to the Governor Brann to increase its capacity to 12 cars.

The Governor Brann ran until 1957, when the state became the owner and operator, and the 24-car Governor Muskie went into service. In 1987, it was replaced by the Margaret Chase Smith, named for Maine's U.S. Senator.

Liberty once had several inns and hotels that served travelers, including the Sanford House in the middle of town, Knowlton's Inn on the St. George River channel, and an inn in South Liberty. However, it was the Liberty Inn on the northeast shore of Lake St. George that drew vacationers.

A stay at the inn in the early 1900s was the start of many long associations with Lake St. George, as many guests purchased land and built cottages to which generations returned year after year.

Harry Grant, the Inn's first owner, was a racecar driver who won the Winston Cup in 1909 and 1910 and competed four times at Indianapolis.

Guests at the inn could enjoy an excursion on the steamboat to Marshall Shores for a picnic or to the Liberty Inn Dance Pavilion on the east side of the lake, where Charlie Overlook's orchestra might be playing.

In the early 1960s the inn became a private home. The new owner was Al Hurwitz, a New Yorker who was a World War II buddy of Raymond Banks from Liberty. Hurwitz developed a keen interest in Liberty, purchased the octagonal post office building, and started the Liberty Historical Society.

This photo taken of Monhegan Island about 1915 shows the steamer May Archer at the dock below the Island House hotel. The large white building to the left is the original Monhegan House, which burned in the 1920s.

Gasoline-powered lobster boats are anchored in the harbor, and in the foreground is a lobster smack, which will transport Monhegan lobstermen's catch to the mainland.

By the early 1900s there was a well-established summer artists' colony on Monhegan and, like the artists, rusticators were coming in increasing numbers to enjoy the isolation and charms of the rugged island.

In 1907 the Island Inn, originally the small Pink House, built a large addition. Seeking business for his new boat, May Archer, the enterprising Captain I. E. Archibald carried building materials from the mainland for the construction project and took mail, at no charge, from Thomaston to Monhegan.

He built up a successful freight and passenger business, secured a mail contract, and ran excursions. During the winter May Archer ran from Rockland to Northeast Harbor.

The Wesleyan Camp Ground at Bayside "is getting to be the most popular resort on the bay," noted the Belfast Progressive Age on August 8, 1873.

The character had changed considerably since the first camp meeting in 1849. "The grove is lively with health and pleasure seekers," observed a Belfast Weekly Advertiser writer a year later. Campers were building cottages, and excursionists were coming by the thousands to enjoy swimming, fishing, boating, and sports in addition to the camp meetings.

A large boarding house opened in 1876 as new streets were being laid and the grounds beautified.

The Northport Hotel opened in 1891, three years after the Waverly burned. It was a Victorian "grand old lady" with 64 rooms, a large porch overlooking the bay, and "all modern improvements, telephone, mail three times daily, pure mineral water, perfect sanitary arrangements and first-class table."

Rates were $2 to $2.50 per day and $80 to $12 per week. A new pavilion, with seating for 1,000 people, also opened in 1891. It was an ideal venue for worship services and Chautauqua assemblies as well as lectures, concerts, musicals, dances, and other entertainment.

Fire consumed the hotel in 1919, and a much plainer Dutch's Inn was built on the site. The building still stood at the top of Ruggles Park in 2014.

The Second Empire-style Hotel Rockland was built in 1870 on Main Street at the foot of Park Street, overlooking Rockland Harbor from the rear.

Originally named the Lynde Hotel, it was renamed the St. Nicholas Hotel in 1880, then became the Rockland Hotel around 1917 and the Hotel Rockland soon thereafter.

The hotel had 75 rooms, moderate rates, and excellent food. It claimed to have the "Most Beautiful Cocktail Lounge on the Coast of Maine."

A typical small city hotel, it was a popular spot for out-of-town businessmen to stay, local organizations to hold meetings, and motoring tourists to spend a night. The hotel burned to the ground on December 12, 1952.

Not far away another Rockland hotel, the luxurious Samoset, welcomed famous and affluent vacationers who arrived by steamboat or the Maine Central Railroad, which owned the hotel from 1911 to 1941.

The grand Victorian hotel, which struggled for years during and after the Depression, burned in 1972. Unlike the Hotel Rockland, however, a new building brought new life to the Samoset as a resort.

When Americans took to the road in their automobiles for vacations in the 1920s, overnight camps sprang up. They offered a place to pitch a tent and park the car, and some had a few cabins for rent. The camps were often combined with a filling station and sometimes a small store that sold candy, cold drinks, and postcards.

Springdale Camps was located on the east side of Route 1A, the road to Bangor. It had about eight tent sites, Socony gas pumps, a store, lunch counter, and small dance hall.

The signs near the road lured the traveler with "Beans Baked in the Ground," a Maine tradition; "Clams," and "Frojoy Ice Cream," a popular brand throughout Maine.

Stockton Springs once had several overnight camps and hotels for auto tourists, who could visit the lighthouse at Cape Jellison. The hotels also accommodated travelers who came by steamboat to Cape Jellison or Sandy Point or by the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad.

Most of Stockton Springs' businesses closed when the Route 1 bypass was built in the late 1950s.

The Firs was a quiet vacation destination that opened in 1901 on 60 acres on Sylvester Cove Road in Sunset on Deer Isle. It could accommodate 100 guests in a renovated farmhouse, cottages, and tents.

Its brochure described it as a place of "conservative appeal to summer vacationists of the best sort" where "fascinating paths ramble along the rugged shore or through the balsam woods and open spaces, where wildflowers grow in abundance."

A scenic path also led to the Sunset post office, where guests could mail postcards.

The Firs also had a camp for boys where tutoring was provided. The tents in the photo may have housed Camp Penobscot campers, or they may have been the rustic lodging choice of guests at The Firs.

Like many summer lodging facilities, business at The Firs dropped during the Depression. The owner applied for a tax abatement, which the Town of Deer Isle denied. He then removed the roof of the main building, which allowed the property to be taken off the tax rolls. It was torn down in the 1940s.

Belfast's longest-running festival began in 1948 as Maine Broiler Day. Poultry was big business in the state and a major employer in Waldo County. Belfast was recognized across North America as a leader in the industry.

Maine Broiler Day, sponsored by the Maine Poultry Improvement Association, Maine Department of Agriculture, and Belfast Chamber of Commerce, brought together industry leaders to discuss and showcase their innovations.

In City Park displays and demonstrations open to the public highlighted new equipment and ways to raise, cook, and serve chickens. There was even a competition among growers for the "chicken of tomorrow."

In 1949 the first Broiler Queen was chosen in a statewide competition; she represented Maine's poultry industry for the next year.

A main attraction of the festival was "The World's Largest Chicken Dinner State of Maine Style." In 1957, 14,000 festivalgoers consumed more than 11 tons of barbecued chicken cooked over 300 feet of open pits. A conveyor belt was introduced in 1960 to expedite serving.

The Penobscot and Maplewood chicken plants had closed by the late 1980s, but the festival continued as the Bay Festival, with a parade, amusements, food, and fireworks.

The Mountain Ash Inn operated from the 1920s to the 1950s. Miss Lennamon, who owned the inn, had cottages built behind it for her friends to rent.

She designed the cottages with particular people in mind; one had an ell to accommodate a concert pianist's grand piano. Each cottage had a name.

The property had a salt-water pool and tennis courts. Meals were served on white tablecloths in the inn.

The few remaining cottages were private residences in 2014, and the main inn building became the dormitory for the Wooden Boat School. The center of the complex is the Town Green.

Summer colonies at Flye Point and Haven also were popular vacation destinations in Brooklin. The Haven Colony, at Center Harbor where the steamboat came in, was started in the late 1800s with a boardinghouse owned by Noah Tibbetts, a Brooklin native who worked for the U.S. Pension Office in Washington for 48 years.

In the early 1900s he built a number of cottages, which he rented with all services for $5 to $7 a week. They were later sold as summer homes. Many of the summer people, among them John Wesley Powell, came from Baltimore and Washington.

Descendants of the some early rusticators continue to come to the Haven Colony every summer.

Enjoying the view of the bay from City Park and taking a dip in its salt-water swimming pool were pleasant ways to spend a summer day in the 1930s. The park offered plenty of other attractions and amenities: bath houses, a picnic pavilion, clambake ovens, sports fields, a playground, horseshoe pits, and concerts in the bandstand.

It also had a campground, and at the park entrance on Northport Avenue, the city erected a large sign welcoming tourists.

Development of a city park was initiated by the Belfast Improvement Society, an organization of women devoted to making Belfast a more attractive and sanitary place to live. They prevailed upon the city to hire foresters to trim trees, to clean up vacant lots, and install rubbish barrels, and they landscaped downtown areas.

In 1903 they conducted a successful petition drive that resulted in the city's purchase of a 15-acre lot between Northport Avenue and the shore for a city park. It officially opened on September 9, 1906. Volunteers made improvements to the lot, and the Improvement Society paid to have roads put in. The city contracted with Boston landscape architect E.L. Beard to develop a plan for the park.

The salt-water pool and seawall in the park were built in 1936 as a Works Progress Association project under Franklin Roosevelt's administration. Thousands of swimmers used the pool the first year it opened.

A new fresh-water pool was built in the early 1970s. The site of the original pool became the park's lower parking lot.

One of the Eastern Steamship Company sister ships, the Belfast or Camden, is shown passing under the Waldo-Hancock Bridge on its Bangor to Boston route on the bridge's opening day in November 1931.

Boston-Bangor steamboat service began in 1823. The Eastern Steamship line, consolidating a number of Maine lines, took over the service in 1901, with passengers and freight and later adding automobiles.

In 1935 it advertised a special $5 rate to transport an automobile and driver from Bangor to Boston; the passenger fare was $5.80. Promotional literature promised "unforgettable glories...of mountain, meadow and river hamlets," stops at "ports beloved of seafaring New England," and views of "glimmering islands."

The Waldo-Hancock Bridge was quite a striking sight, too. Bridge designer David B. Steinman of New York described the trusses as "a new artistic type emphasizing horizontal and vertical lines" that were compatible with the "rigor of the natural rocky setting, the stern lines of adjacent Fort Knox, and the background colonial architecture in the adjacent towns."

The bridge allowed motorists to bypass Bangor on their trip east. Vehicles were charged a $.35 toll each way, and it remained a toll bridge until 1952.

Belfast and Camden made their last trips in 1935. They were no match for the automobile.

The Waldo-Hancock Bridge was replaced by the Penobscot Narrows Bridge in 2006.

The Avalon Casino and cottages were located at the foot of Tyler's Hill on Joyces Point in Deer Isle, near the steamboat wharf. It was a popular dance hall between 1912 and 1917 in the days when casinos were places for entertainment without gambling.

Small steamers brought excursionists across Penobscot Bay to Brooklin, and a boat took them across the Eggemoggin Reach to the Avalon Casino.

In the early 1900s it was easy to get around Penobscot Bay by steamboat. Catherine, Juliett, and Boothbay made a run from Rockland to Blue Hill, with stops at Dark Harbor on Islesboro, Eggemoggin, Sargentville, Deer Isle, Sedgwick, Brooklin, South Brooksville, West Tremont, and South Blue Hill en route.

From Belfast Marjorie ran to Brooklin, Silver Star to Castine and Brooksville, and Alice Howard to Castine. Some of the small steamers made stops at hotel landings as well as town wharves.

In the 1890s, William Haskell, a sea captain, and his wife, Elizabeth, opened a boardinghouse that they named the Ark in the family home on Deer Isle.

The Haskell family were early Deer Isle settlers. In 1793 Ignatius, owner of a sailing loft and shipbuilding business, built the house that became the Ark and that remained in the Haskell family until 1942.

William Haskell and his crew perished at sea off Cape Hatteras in 1915, but Elizabeth continued to operate the Ark. Their son Stacy Benjamin, who as a boy took boarders out for rides or fishing on his small boat, ran the boardinghouse after his mother died.

A number of New York Yacht Club members summered on Deer Isle in the 1890s. C. Oliver Iselin, one of the syndicate that owned four America's Cup vessels, stayed at the Ark. The yachtsmen watched with admiration as the local fishermen raced their sailboats into the harbor at the end of their workday. Their sailing skills were so good that the owners of the America's Cup boats turned to them for their crews.

The Defender in 1895 and Columbia in 1899 were sailed to victory by Deer Isle crews, among whom was Philip Haskell, Stacy's older brother.

The Ark later became Pilgrim's Inn, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

This 1920s scene showis a schooner yacht, yawl, and three luxury steam yachts moored off Sherman's Point in Camden Harbor. Some of the country's largest, most sumptuous yachts belonged to summer residents of Camden.

The large steam yacht in the middle Cyrus H. K. Curtis's 228-foot Lyndonia II, built in 1920 after its predecessor had been acquired by the U.S. Government and converted to Navy use.

Curtis was a native Mainer who founded a publishing empire that made him one of the richest men in America.

Lyndonia II's captain was Albert Rich of Camden, and the vessel had a crew of 39. A New York Times reporter, who likened the boat to an ocean liner, interviewed Curtis on his yacht in 1922. "Yachting is not a hobby for me. It is a necessity. I spend half my time on this ship," Curtis said.

He oversaw much of his business from the vessel, whether in Boston, Portland, or Philadelphia, holding meetings of 20 men in the dining room. "A yacht's a good business investment. It's good business from every point of view — work, health, pleasure, everything," Curtis declared.

Bayside Lodge, the large hotel in the photo, and Baycrest Lodge next door were located on the Castine side of Cape Rosier. They and the smaller Falls View House down the road welcomed guests who were delivered with their steamer trunks right to the wharf by the lodge.

Many of the summer people were teachers, who stayed for most of the summer. There was much to occupy them: sailing and fishing with local residents, picnic excursions to the islands near the head of Cape Rosier, trips by power boat to Castine for church on Sunday or by steamer to Belfast for shopping, or just relaxing in the lodge's living room.

Captain Lester and Augusta Blake built Bayside Lodge about the turn of the 20th century, and their son Hobart and his wife Hilda ran it in the 1920s, when this photo was probably taken.

"Eastwind," the cottage on the left, and the barn across the road were part of the Lodge. The Blakes lived in the house on the far left. Baycrest occupied several buildings to the right of Bayside.

Behind these boys is Ryder's Hotel, a popular lodging in the early days of tourism on Islesboro. In the building on the right, Benjamin Ryder opened the island's first boardinghouse for summer residents, the first of whom came from Bangor.

Seaside House enjoyed a scenic location on Saturday Cove, now called Ryder’s Cove. As more people discovered the pleasures of vacationing on the island, in 1885 Ryder added the large building with the tower, which accommodated 100 guests, and, later, the white annex across the road.

The hotel was known at various times as the Seaside Hotel, The Islesborough, and Johnson-by-the Sea.

Guests arrived at the steamship wharf at Ryder's Cove, which in the 1890s had a millinery and dry goods store, ice cream parlor, post office, livery stables, and private homes.

About 1930 two stories of the hotel were removed, and the building became a dance hall.

As Islesboro grew as a summer destination in the 1890s, Bay View House, south of the main steamboat landing, and the Islesboro Inn in Dark Harbor were built, and the first island golf club opened. By 1915, the Islesboro Inn offered 180 rooms for wealthy guests, and Dark Harbor was bordered with many substantial summer homes.

The Lobster Pound Restaurant in Lincolnville Beach began in 1926 as a shanty with an outdoor cooker. Indoor dining became an option about 1940. The restaurant closed during World War II but has operated continuously since reopening in the late 1940s.

A lobster dinner is a much-anticipated part of the Maine experience for many vacationers. When touring by automobile became popular, small roadside eateries lured travelers with lobster holding tanks, outdoor cookers, a few picnic tables, and a "lobster pound" sign.

At the back of the parking lot in the photo is the Lobster Trap Gift Shop, a true "tourist trap." It sold souvenirs in a disguised Quonset hut until it was washed out to sea in 1985 by Hurricane Gloria. When the restaurant was rebuilt after a fire in the 1980s, the lobster tanks and cooking equipment were moved indoors.

In 2014, the Lobster Pound still served lobster purchased from Lincolnville fishermen whose boats are just outside the restaurant windows.

The Atlantic Highway was the route up the Maine coast in the early days of automobile touring. First established in 1911 as the Quebec-Miami International Highway, it combined old and new roads to make a continuous route for adventurous motorists.

In New England it was renamed the Atlantic Highway in 1915, and in 1922, when a nationwide marking system was adopted, it became Route 1.

A U.S. Department of Agriculture report in October 1927 showed Route 1 as a mix of hard surface pavement, gravel, and graded and drained earth roads.

The road through Lincolnville Beach was still earth when this photo was taken, probably in the 1920s. It wasn't paved until 1932, and the route through Belfast was not entirely paved until 1937.

Elm trees arched over the highway as it came down the hill to the Lincolnville Beach, where the boarding house on the corner of Beach Road (Route 173) welcomed summer guests. The tall building with the big windows, now gone, was Dearborn's store, which also sold Texaco gasoline.

The building on the far right was Tom Gushee's store and the post office. Across the road, tourists could buy lobsters at a shanty with an outdoor cooker, which grew into the Lobster Pound Restaurant.

The 1937 Federal Writers' Project Maine : a Guide 'Down East' noted that Belfast was a "popular tourist center" and described several historic houses worth taking a look at.

At that time Route 1 ran right through the city on Northport Avenue and High Street, down the hill on Bridge Street, across Memorial Bridge, and up the hill to East Belfast.

In the 1930s and '40s a number of homeowners on Northport Avenue and High Street opened their houses to travelers and gave them names: the Wild Briar, "Birchcrest, a real home for tourists," Dreamworld, Home Nook, Rock-Haven, and the Memory Shop, Antiques and Over Nite guests.

On Belfast's east side, Night Fall Lodge, now the Cherished Home store, and Bay View Farm, now Broadreach Family & Community Services, offered lodging.

Bay View Farm, which had the largest barn in Waldo County, was open all year, with 8 rooms for tourists and facilities for club parties and luncheons. A 1933 ad for Bay View Farm "Overlooking Beautiful Penobscot Bay" boasted, "Our Famous Chicken Dinners Cooked Southern and New England Style cannot be Equaled – Board by the Day of Week."

Bay View Farm was still welcoming guests in the 1950s, but new zoning laws had paved the way for more tourism-related businesses on Searsport and Northport Avenues. The Penobscot Bay Motel, Belfast's first, opened in 1953 across from the hospital. It later housed health-care offices.

Penobscot Bay Camps was located along Route 1 on Belfast's east side, near the Mooring Campground. Both offered fine views of Penobscot Bay and often of the steamships Belfast or Camden heading to or from the Eastern Steamship Wharf.

The vessels provided Bangor-Boston service several days a week through 1935.

In 1917 the Belfast Board of Trade erected 200 signs promoting Belfast along Maine roads. In 1921 a new concrete bridge over the Passagassawakeag River opened. Tourism marketing and better roads and bridges encouraged auto touring along the Maine coast grew, increasing the demand for overnight accommodations.

Many tourists still stayed in downtown hotels, but by 1930 there were often campgrounds and overnight cabins on the outskirts of cities.

The 1950s brought more options for lodging, and the old overnight cabins began to lose their t appeal. Penobscot Bay Cabins was still advertising in the Belfast Tourist Guide in 1953, but its days were numbered. After it closed, local residents bought some of the old cabins and moved them to ponds and lakes to use as camps.

Christian camp meetings had a huge following from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s. Some were small and transient, while others, like Bayside in Northport, were large and well established.

The August 7, 1879 Republican Journal, quoting from the Philadelphia Times, described the origins of the camp meeting as "the desire of godly people to go to the woods for calm meditation and worship."

The wooded Maple Grove Campground on Mt. Ephraim Road in Searsport had the right setting as well as a hotel, meeting hall, and several family-size buildings. People came from all around to hear local or traveling preachers.

This crowd may have gathered on a "Big Sunday," in the 1920s, when people were baptized in Cains Pond.

The campground succumbed to fire, and what was not burned fell into disrepair. There is no evidence left of Maple Grove.

From the late 1800s to the mid-1900s summer visitors vacationed at the Swan Lake House on the west side of the lake. Coaches from Bangor made stops at both the Black's Corner Inn in North Searsport and the Swan Lake House.

Guests stayed for a couple of days to a fortnight, enjoying lake views from their rooms, dining on the hotel's wrap-around porch, canoeing, and fishing. Some may have gone swimming at Wilson's Beach, now Swan Lake State Park, or roller skating in the pavilion near the west shore.

The Swan Lake House had many proprietors during its history. One was E.L. Marden, rumored to operate a still on the hill above the hotel in defiance of prohibition laws. After the vacant hotel building burned in the 1960s, secret doors were discovered, behind which moonshine was allegedly hidden.

Penobscot Park, opposite Sears Island, was quite an attraction in the early 1900s. A persuasive advertisement in the Republican-Journal in July 1910 read: "The only public bathing and boating place in Waldo County. Come and try one of D. R. White's FAMOUS SHORE DINNERS. Large dancing pavilion with good music. Swings, ball grounds, bathing, boating and fishing. We guarantee to please."

The Bangor and Aroostook Railroad developed Penobscot Park shortly after it opened its Northern Seaport Line to Searsport in 1905.

At the time Sears Island was owned by a syndicate of men who were prominent in the railroad company and planned to develop a resort on the island.

The Bar Point House, dance pavilion, merry-go-rounds, and a shore dinner for 50 cents a plate attracted summer people as well as local residents. The dances drew bands from outside as well as within Waldo County. In this photograph dancers are waiting for the Marine Band from Greenville to start playing.

Penobscot Park was closed during World War I but reopened for seven more years in 1920.

The lighthouse and sandy beaches at Owls Head have attracted summer visitors for generations. At Crescent Beach a summer colony began to take root in 1895 when local fish dealer and farmer Fred Smith built an open dancing pavilion.

He began serving fish chowders made with milk from the cows he stabled out back. Soon he added a roof to the pavilion, built a large dining room and kitchen, installed one of the first telephones in town, and constructed a long pier so the steamboat could land.

His business became so popular that he built the boardinghouse that is shown in this photo, flanked by cottages. By 1900 the Crescent Beach Inn also had a bowling alley, shooting tables, and billiards tables.

Smith was instrumental in extending the electric trolley line from Rockland and Thomaston to Crescent Beach, and he also built the road along the beach.

Rusticators as well as local families built the cottages in the early 1900s. Crescent Beach's heyday lasted until about 1930.

New owners revived the Inn after World War II, and it attracted guests from all across the country. The building is now gone, but the cottages have been refurbished, and Crescent Beach is again a popular summer destination.

Postcards of lobster traps, lobster boats, and lobsters have been common for many years. Here Eldridge Stone is holding a lobster that probably weighs more than 8 pounds.

Stone was a colorful character in Port Clyde. He was said to be a rumrunner during Prohibition, who would take his boat out to a cove, sink it when the police were after him, and then raise it after things quieted down.

He also reportedly liked to make gifts to friends of fresh fish he helped himself to from someone else's catch.

Temple Heights in Northport is one of the longest continuously operating Spiritualist camps in the world. It was founded in 1879 by Dr. Ben Colson, a believer in natural and spiritual healing.

The camp purchased the Brown farm a half mile from Saturday Cove in 1883, established a tent ground, and sold lots for cottages. Guests arrived by steamboat at the new wharf below the camp.

In 1900 the Beacon Ethical Union, which was unaffiliated with Temple Heights Spiritualist Camp, constructed a hotel and sanitarium next to the wharf on the camp's grounds.

Early camp meetings, which lasted for a week, were held in a grove by the shore; later a chapel was built. Visitors paid 10 cents to listen to speakers or meet with mediums for a day or 50 cents for a season of services.

In 1927 the spiritualist camp built a lodge, which was doubled in size in 1960.

The old cottages were sold long ago as summer homes, and only Nikawa Lodge and the chapel remained in 2014. Temple Heights Spiritualist Camp has experienced a resurgence in recent years, with more than 2,000 participants a season.

Castine residents frequented Devereux' Ice on the North Castine-Penobscot for ice cream. Frank and Lowena Devereux ran the store as well as the Devereux lobster pound.

Frank Devereux developed a baseball diamond behind the building, which drew large crowds on Sunday. The Devereux family also owned cottages and a picnic area on the shore, from which there was a view across the Bay to Fort Point.

The Old Devereux House, across from the lobster pound, was built in 1788.

In the 1930s Castine was a busy town with four grocery stores, hardware and drug stores, dry goods and shoe stores, an undertaker, a hospital, and the Eastern State Normal School, which trained teachers.

In the days before Maine Maritime Academy, the Castine Sardine Factory and boatyards dominated the waterfront. There were several hotels, including the Castine House, Pentagoet, and Shetola House, but only one restaurant. "People didn't eat out much," recalled a woman who was a child in Castine in the 1930s.

A listing in Duncan Hines' Lodging for a Night, a popular guide for travelers published in 1938, was much sought after by the owners of tourist accommodations.

"Modern Guest Houses, located in the country or at the edge of town, and up-to-date Auto Courts away from noises, are the types of places most desired by discriminating motorists," wrote Hines in his introduction to the publication.

The lodging facility opened by Bertha and Everett Humphrey in the 1930s on Route 1 in Rockport offered both kinds of accommodation, which earned Hines' seal of approval. Its listing read: "1 Guest House & Cottages: Humphrey's. Open May to Oct. 6. Simple cottages and 3 rms in farmhouse. On a hill overlooking the bay. No rms. WB. No meals. E. 2NB $2.00 up. FPark. Pets P."

A variety of lodging facilities have occupied the hill above scenic Glen Cove for decades. Humphrey's operated until about 1970. Its site later became the Strawberry Hill Seaside Inn.

Located on Route 1 on the north side of Searsport, the Tourists Inn and Cabins was among several cabin colonies in the area that offered a lodging alternative to the overnight camps and tourist homes of the 1920s and early 1930s.

Individual cabins afforded guests privacy and comfort, including running water and screened porches. The sign, “Inspected and Licensed 1931” assured the traveler of cleanliness.

A few years later Duncan Hines began publishing restaurant and lodging guides, and "Recommended by Duncan Hines" signs were sought out by discriminating travelers.

The Cash Grocery Store at the Tourists Inn sold snacks for motorists and a small inventory of grocery items. Neighborhood children could walk to the store on a wooden sidewalk to buy penny candy.

The women at the tables near the road, possibly members of a sewing circle, are selling needlework, ice cream, cakes and candy to support the local church.

Members of the Weld family from Massachusetts were among North Haven Island's early "rusticators." Dr. Charles G. Weld, a Boston physician and philanthropist, purchased Iron Point, on the southeastern corner of the island, and in 1898 built a large summer home.

His windmill pumped water from North Haven's first artesian well. Dr. Webb took great interest in local affairs and the well being of year-round island residents. He kept his dock open during very cold winters when the town ferry dock was unusable because of ice. To facilitate more frequent mail delivery and communication with the mainland, Dr. Weld had the steamer Sylvia built.

Dr. Weld and his brother William were avid sailors. Charles attempted to sail around the world in his own yacht in 1886, but the boat was destroyed by fire in Yokohama harbor. That year William brought a new sailboat to the island aboard his schooner; it was the inspiration for the North Haven Dinghy, from which a whole racing class of gaff-rigged sailboats was born.

North Haven boatbuilder James Osman Brown began building an improved version in 1888. North Haven Dinghies are the oldest continuously raced class of sailboats in the country, and J.O. Brown & Sons still built boats on North Haven in 2014.

In the 1940s, when this photo was most likely taken, summer visitors generally came to Buck's Harbor on their sailboats. From the Yacht Club, it was a short walk to the center of the village, where there were two markets and a garage.

The Buck's Harbor Gift Shop, up the hill from the marine shop, was run by Mabel Gray. She and her husband, Ray, who owned the Buck's Harbor Market, lived next door.

Condon's Store and Condon's Garage, also in business in Buck's Harbor in the 1940s, were well known because of Robert McCloskey's 1953 children's book, One Morning in Maine.