Bangor, Maine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Bangor, Maine | |
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| Nickname: The Queen City of the East, Queen City | |
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| Coordinates: | |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| State | Maine |
| County | Penobscot |
| Government | |
| - City Council Chair | Susan Hawes (ends 2008) |
| Area | |
| - City | 34.7 sq mi (90.0 km²) |
| - Land | 34.4 sq mi (89.2 km²) |
| - Water | 0.3 sq mi (0.8 km²) |
| Elevation | 118 ft (36 m) |
| Population (2000) | |
| - City | 31,473 (city proper) |
| - Density | 913.5/sq mi (352.7/km²) |
| - Metro | 140,000 |
| Time zone | Eastern (UTC-5) |
| - Summer (DST) | Eastern (UTC-4) |
| ZIP codes | 04401-04402 |
| Area code(s) | 207 |
| FIPS code | 23-02795 |
| GNIS feature ID | 0561558 |
| Website: bangormaine.gov | |
Bangor is the county seat of Penobscot County, Maine,[1] United States, and the major commercial and cultural center for eastern and northern Maine. For statistical purposes, it is the principal city of the Bangor Maine New England County Metropolitan Area which encompasses Bangor, all of Penobscot County and part of Waldo County, Maine.
As of 2008, Bangor is the third-largest city in Maine, as it has been for more than a century. The population of the city was 31,473 at the 2000 census. The population of the Bangor Metropolitan Statistical Area was over 140,000.
Bangor is approximately 30 miles from Penobscot Bay up the Penobscot River at its confluence with the Kenduskeag Stream.
[edit] History
[edit] Earliest period
The Penobscot people long inhabited the area around present-day Bangor, and still occupy tribal land on the nearby Penobscot Indian Island Reservation. The first European to visit the site was probably the Portuguese Esteban Gomez in 1524, followed by Samuel de Champlain in 1605. Champlain was looking for the mythical city of Norumbega, thought to be where Bangor now lies. French priests settled among the Penobscots, and the valley remained contested between France and Britain into the 1750s, making it one of the last regions to become part of New England.
The British-American settlement which became Bangor was started in 1769 by Jacob Buswell, and was originally known as Condeskeag Plantation.[2] By 1772 there were 12 families, along with a sawmill, store, and school. The settlement’s first child, Mary Howard, was born that year. The first lawsuit was brought in 1790, when Jacob Buswell sued David Wall for calling him “an old damned grey-headed bugar of Hell” and Rev. Seth Noble “a damned rascall”.[3]
Starting in 1775, Condeskeag became the site of treaty negotiations by which the Penobscot were made to give up almost all their ancestral lands, a process complete by about 1820, when Maine became a state. The tribe was eventually left with only their main village on an island up-river from Bangor, called “Indian Old Town” by the settlers. Eventually a white settlement taking the name Old Town was planted on the river bank opposite the Penobscot village, which began to be called “Indian Island”, and is now the site of the Penobscot Nation.[4]
During the American Revolution in 1779, the rebel Penobscot Expedition fled up the Penobscot River after being routed in the Battle of Castine, and the last of its ships (at least nine) were burned or captured by the British fleet at Bangor. Paul Revere was among the survivors who fled into the woods.[5] A cannon from one of the rebel warships is mounted in a downtown park, and artifacts from the sunken ships continue to be discovered in the river-bed, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Having grown in size to 567 people, Condeskeag decided to incorporate as a town in 1791,[6] As legend has it, the settlers sent the Rev. Seth Noble to Boston with a petition to name the town "Sunbury" (at the time, Maine was part of Massachusetts). Noble's favorite song was a hymn tune by William Tans'ur entitled Bangor (after the Antiphonary of Bangor), and, in a moment of either drunkenness or misunderstanding, he caused the town to be given that name instead.[7]
The town was sacked by the British during the War of 1812.[6] following the route of local militia in the Battle of Hampden.[6] After the selectmen surrendered the town, the British raided shops and homes for 30 hours, and threatened to burn ships in the harbor and unfinished ones on stocks. The selectmen, fearing the fires from the ships on stocks would spread to the town, struck a deal by which they put up a bond, and promised to deliver the unfinished vessels to the British by the end of November. The British floated the seaworthy ships into the middle of the Penobscot, set some ablaze, and took others loaded with horses and cattle back to their post in Castine, which they occupied until April 26, 1815, when they left for Canada. The British stayed only 30 hours, according to one account, because in the midst of celebrating their victory the soldiers became so drunk on local rum that the officers felt vulnerable to counter-attack.
[edit] Lumber capital
In the 19th century, Bangor prospered as a lumber port, and began to call itself "the lumber capital of the world". Most of the local sawmills (as many as 300-400) were actually upriver in neighboring towns like Orono, Old Town, Bradley, and Milford, Bangor controlling the capital, port facilities, supplies, and entertainment. Bangor capitalists also owned most of the forests. The main markets for Bangor lumber were the East Coast cities - Boston and New York were largely built from Maine lumber - but much was also shipped directly to the Caribbean. The city was particularly active in shipping building lumber to California in the Gold Rush period, via Cape Horn, before sawmills could be established in northern California, Oregon, and Washington. Bangorians subsequently helped transplant the Maine culture of lumbering to the Pacific Northwest, and participated directly in the Gold Rush themselves. Bangor, Washington; Bangor, California; and Little Bangor, Nevada are legacies of this contact.[8]
Sailors and loggers gave the city a widespread reputation for roughness — their stomping grounds were known as the "Devil's Half Acre".[6]. (The same name was also applied, at roughly the same time, to The Devil's Half-Acre, Pennsylvania). The arrival of Irish immigrants from nearby Canada beginning in the 1830s, and their competition with local yankees for jobs, sparked a deadly sectarian riot in 1833 which lasted days and had to be put down by militia. Realizing the need for a police force, the town incorporated as The City of Bangor in 1834.[9] Irish-Catholic and later Jewish immigrants eventually became established members of the community, along with many migrants from Atlantic Canada. Of 205 black citizens who lived in Bangor in 1910, over a third were originally from Canada.[10]
Bangor was a center of political agitation during the bloodless Aroostook War, a boundary dispute with Britain in 1838-39. Still wary of the British navy, which had brought violence to the Penobscot twice, local politicians caused the Federal government to build a huge granite fort, Fort Knox downriver from Bangor at Prospect, Maine from 1844 to 1864. It remains one of the region's most prominent landmarks, although it never fired a shot in anger.
Many of the lumber barons built elaborate Greek Revival and Victorian houses that still stand on Broadway, West Broadway, and elsewhere around the city. Bangor is also noteworthy for its large number of substantial old churches, as well as its imposing canopy of shade trees. The city was so beautiful it was coined "The Queen City of the East." The shorter Queen City appellation is still used by some local clubs, organizations, events and businesses.[11]
[edit] Slavery issue and the Civil War
Bangor was a center of anti-slavery politics in the years before the American Civil War, partly due to the influence of the Bangor Theological Seminary. The city formed an Anti-Slavery Society with 105 members in 1837, and a parallel Female Anti-Slavery Society with 100 more. In 1841, the gubernatorial candidate of the anti-slavery Liberty Party received more votes in Bangor than in any city in Maine, though he lost by a wide margin to a less radical Bangorean, Edward Kent. U.S. Congressman Israel Washburn Jr. from neighboring Orono was instrumental in organizing 30 members of the U.S. House of Representatives to discuss forming the Republican Party, and was the first politician of that rank to use the term "Republican", in a speech at Bangor in June 2, 1854.[12]
That Hannibal Hamlin of neighboring Hampden became Lincoln's first Vice President, testified to the strength of local anti-slavery feeling, at least among an educated elite. The city gradually became so hot for the Republican cause that on Aug. 17, 1861 the offices of the Democratic paper, the Bangor Daily Union, were ransacked by a mob, and the presses and other materials thrown into the street and burned. Editor Marcellus Emery was threatened with violence but escaped unharmed. He only resumed publishing after the war.[13]
Bangor and surrounding towns paid a heavy price in the American Civil War. The 1st Maine Heavy Artillery Regiment, mustered in Bangor and commanded by a local merchant, lost more men in a single ill-fated charge (in the Second Battle of Petersburg, 1864), than any Union regiment in the course of the war. The locally-mustered 2nd Maine Regiment, the first to march out of the state in 1861, also took terrific casualties. On the other hand, the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment commanded by Maj. Gen. Joshua Chamberlain from the neighboring town of Brewer gained fame for holding Little Round Top in the Battle of Gettysburg. Grant gave Chamberlain the honor of accepting the surrender of Lee's Army of Virginia. A bridge connecting Bangor with Brewer is named for Chamberlain, who was one of eight Civil War soldiers from Bangor or surrounding Penobscot County towns to receive the Medal of Honor.[14]
Bangor's main Civil War naval hero was Charles A. Boutelle, who accepted the surrender of the Confederate fleet after the Battle of Mobile Bay. A Bangor residential street is named for him. A number of Bangor ships were captured on the high seas by Confederate raiders in the Civil War, including the "Delphine", "James Littlefield", "Mary E. Thompson" and "Golden Rocket".[15]
The University of Maine was founded in the suburban town of Orono in 1868.
In the 1880s there was a local quarrel over the adoption of Eastern Standard Time because Bangor was so far east. Bangor even elected an anti-EST mayor (J.F. Snow), and the city had, for awhile, two times. Some people set their watches to EST, and some to 'local time'. The issue was finally settled by the state legislature, which made EST 'standard' across all of Maine.
[edit] Early twentieth century
In 1900 Bangor was still shipping wooden spools to England and wooden fruit boxes to Italy. An average of 2,000 vessels called at Bangor each year. But its days as a lumber port were numbered, as the Maine woods began to be purchased by paper corporations, and large paper mills were erected in towns all along the Penobscot. The transition from lumber to paper was completed in the first quarter of the 20th century, though Bangor businesses continued to prosper by serving the paper industry.[16] Local capitalists also invested in a train route to Aroostook County in northern Maine (the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad), opening that area to settlement.
In 1909, Robert E. Peary, after leading the first expedition to reach the North Pole, returned by train to the United States from Canada, via Bangor, where he was treated to a reception and given an engraved silver cup.
On April 30, 1911, embers from a hayshed near the Kenduskeag Stream ignited nearby buildings, sparking the Great Fire of 1911. The fire would destroy most of the downtown, forever changing the face of the city, but as in the case of the more famous Great Chicago Fire of 1871, Bangor rose again and prospered. Most of the present downtown is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the 'Great Fire Historic District', while the portion that survived the fire is the 'West Market Square Historic District'[11]
In 1915, a German agent, Werner Horn attempted to dynamite the international railroad bridge in nearby Vanceboro (which connected Bangor with Halifax) but was captured and arraigned on federal charges in Bangor. Later that year, $100 million in British gold bullion was shipped by rail from Halifax to New York, over that same bridge and through Bangor, in order to pay war-related debts.[17]
The city was visited by the global Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 and over a hundred died. This was the worst 'natural disaster' in Bangor's history (see "Accidents and Natural Disasters" below)
In the fall of 1937, public enemy number one, Al Brady, and most of his infamous Brady Gang, were killed in the bloodiest shootout in Maine's history. Federal agents lined the rooftops of Bangor's Central Street, shooting and killing Al Brady after he and his gang attempted to purchase guns and ammunition from Dakin's Sporting Goods downtown. Brady is buried in the public section of Mount Hope Cemetery, on the north side of Mount Hope Avenue.[18] Until recently Brady's grave was unmarked. A group of schoolchildren erected a wooden marker over his grave in the 1990s, which was replaced by a more permanent stone in 2007[19]
[edit] Second World War and after
During the Second World War, Bangor's Dow Airfield (later Dow Air Force Base) became a major embarkation point for U.S. Army Air Force planes flying to and returning from Europe. Photographs and obituaries of 112 servicemen from Bangor who gave their lives in the war are preserved in 'Book of Honor' at the Bangor Public Library. There was also a small POW Camp in Bangor for captured German soldiers, a satellite of the much larger Camp Houlton in northern Maine.
In November, 1944, two German spies who had been landed on the Maine coast by U-Boat hitched a ride to Bangor, where they boarded a train to New York. They were eventually arrested and tried after an extensive Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) manhunt.[20]
In the post-war period Dow Airfield became a Strategic Air Command Base, and was subsequently converted into the Bangor International Airport. Beginning in the 1970s, hundreds of thousands of international airline passengers, especially those on charter flights, cleared customs in Bangor as their planes refueled on the way from Europe to the interior of the United States or Mexico. The airport also became a major portal for returning troops in both the first and second Gulf Wars.
The destruction of downtown landmarks such as the city hall and train station in the late 1960s Urban Renewal Program is now considered to have been a huge planning mistake, ushering a decline of the city center that was only accelerated by the construction of the Bangor Mall in 1978 and subsequent big box stores on the city's outskirts. Downtown Bangor began to recover in the 1990s, however, with bookstores, cafe/restaurants, galleries, and museums filling once-vacent storefronts. The recent re-development of the city's waterfront has also helped re-focus cultural life in the historic center.[21]
In 1992 Bangor was the launch site for the Chrysler Trans-Atlantic Challenge Balloon Race, which saw teams from five nations competing to reach Europe. The Belgians won, but the American team, blown off course, became the first to pilot a balloon from North America to Africa (it landed near Fez, Morocco), setting new endurance and distance records in the process.
Also in 1992, a series of NASA scientific research flights carried out from Bangor, using a converted U-2 spy plane proved that the hole in the ozone layer had critically grown over the northern hemisphere, prompting an acceleration of the global phase-out of CFCs (the Copenhagen Amendment to the Montreal Protocol}
One of the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Marianne MacFarlane (a passenger on United Flight 175, which hit the World Trade Center) had worked at the Bangor International Airport.
[edit] Geography
Bangor is located at (44.803, -68.770).[22] According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 34.7 square miles (90.0 km²), of which, 34.5 square miles (89.2 km²) of it is land and 0.3 square miles (0.8 km²) of it (0.86%) is water.
Geography has long been key to the city's prosperity. The Penobscot River watershed above Bangor is both extensive and heavily forested, yet was too far north to attract American settlers intent on farming. These same conditions made it ideal for lumbering, along with deep winter snows which allowed logs to be easily dragged from the woods by horse-teams. Carried to the Penobscot or its tributaries, logs could be floated downstream with the spring thaw to sawmills on waterfalls (water-power driving the sawblades) just above Bangor. The sawn lumber was then shipped from the city's docks, Bangor being at the head-of-tide (between the rapids and the ocean) to points anywhere in the world needing wood. The combination of forests and sheltered coves along the nearby Maine coast also fostered the development of a ship-building industry to service the lumber trade.
Many of the same conditions that favored lumbering were attractive to the paper industry, which took over the Penobscot watershed in the twentieth century. One large difference was transportation: the paper was shipped out, and the chemicals in, by railroad. The city began turning its back on the river as its train-yards became more important.
Bangor's other geographic advantage, not realizable until the mid-twentieth century, was that it lay along the most direct air-route between the U.S. East Coast and Europe (the Great Circle Route). The construction of an air-field in the 1930s, and its continual expansion under military auspices through the 1960s, allowed the city to eventually take full advantage of this geographic gift. Having the Canadian border close-by also helped. Bangor was the last American airport before Europe, or the first American airport one encountered flying from Europe. The extension of air routes connecting Europe with the U.S. West Coast and the Caribbean in the 1970s-80s put Bangor very much in the middle as a refueling stop for charter aircraft. The subsequent development of longer-range jets began to reduce this advantage in the 1990s.
A potential advantage that has always eluded the city is its location between the Canadian port city of Halifax and the the rest of Canada (as well as New York). As early as the 1870s 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). A "European and North American Railroad" was actually opened through Bangor, but the commerce never lived up to this potential. More recently attempts to capture traffic between Halifax and Montreal by constructing an East-West Highway through Maine have also come to naught. Most overland traffic between the two parts of Canada continues to go over Maine rather than through it.
Bangor's remaining geographic advantages include the following:
- Forms the gateway between Canada's Maritime Provinces and the U.S. East Coast
- Is the American gateway to both the eastern half of the Maine coast, and the northern Maine woods, both important tourist distinations. Acadia National Park lies just to the south and Baxter State Park just to the north.
- Is the major retailing, service, and cultural center for half of Maine, and a significant destination in its own right for tourists/shoppers from the Canadian Maritime Provinces
- Is adjacent to the University of Maine
- Retains urban amenities, but is geographically distant from other East Coast cities, including even Portland, Maine. Some people like that, either for the isolation, the mystique, or both.
[edit] Demographics
As of the census[23] of 2000, there were 31,473 people, 13,713 households, and 7,185 families residing in the city. The population density was 913.7 people per square mile (352.7/km²). There were 14,587 housing units at an average density of 423.5/sq mi (163.5/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 94.96% White, 1.02% African American, 0.98% Native American, 1.16% Asian, 0.06% Pacific Islander, 0.39% from other races, and 1.43% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.05% of the population.
Of Bangor's 13,713 households, 26.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 36.0% were married couples living together, 12.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 47.6% were non-families. 37.6% of all households were made up of individuals and 11.5% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.12 and the average family size was 2.81.
21.3% of Bangor's population was under the age of 18, 12.4% from 18 to 24, 30.3% from 25 to 44, 22.0% from 45 to 64, and 14.1% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36 years. For every 100 females there were 89.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 85.1 males.
The median household income in the city was $29,740, and the median income for a family was $42,047. Males had a median income of $32,314 versus $23,759 for females. The per capita income for the city was $19,295. About 11.9% of families and 16.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 16.9% of those under age 18 and 13.1% of those age 65 or over.
As of 2007, the population of the Bangor Metropolitan Area (which includes Penobscot and parts of Waldo and Hancock Counties) is 147,180, indicating a 1.56 growth rate since 2000, almost all of it accounted for by Bangor. Metro Bangor had a higher percentage of people with high school degrees than the national average (85% compared to 76.5%) and a slightly higher number of graduate degree holders (7.55% compared to 7.16%). It had much higher no. of physicians per capita (291 vs. 170), because of the presence of two large hospitals.[24]
[edit] Cultural institutions
The Bangor Public Library, founded in 1883, traces its beginnings to 1830 and seven books in a simple footlocker. It now has a collection of over 500,000 volumes, and regularly records one of the highest circulation rates in the country.[25] Next to the Public Library is the Luther H. Peirce Memorial, a large statue commemorating River Drivers created by the noted sculptor Charles Eugene Tefft in 1925.
The University of Maine Museum of Art, located in Norumbega Hall in downtown Bangor, has a permanent collection of over 6500 pieces, including works by Berenice Abbott, Marsden Hartley, Winslow Homer, John Marin, Carl Sprinchorn, and Andrew Wyeth.[26] The Maine Discovery Museum, a major children's museum founded in 2001 in the former Freese's Department Store. The Bangor Museum and Center for History in addition to its exhibit space maintains the historic Thomas A. Hill House.[27] The Bangor Police Department boasts a police museum with some items dating to the 1700's. There is a Fire Museum at the former State Street Fire Station.
There are several performing arts venues and groups in the Bangor area. The Bangor Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1896, is the oldest continually operating symphony orchestra in the United States.[28] Bangor's Robinson Ballet Company, established in 1977, sometimes performs with the symphony.[29] The Bangor Band, founded in 1859 and performing continually since then, gives free weekly concerts in the city's parks during the summer, and counts among its past conductors noted march composer Robert B. Hall. The Penobscot Theatre Company, founded in 1973, is a professional theater company based in the historic Bangor Opera House.[30] The Maine Center for the Arts, located at the nearby University of Maine, hosts a wide variety of touring performing artists and events. The Ten Bucks Theatre Company is a new local group of ensemble actors.[31] River City Cinema hosts a free outdoor summer film festival in downtown Bangor.[32] The Bangor Art Society is another component of a flourishing local and regional art scene.
The University of Maine, the flagship campus of the University of Maine System is located 9 miles from Bangor in the town of Orono, and adds significantly to the city's cultural life. There is also a vocationally-oriented University College of Bangor, associated with the University of Maine Augusta. Bangor's Husson College, founded in 1898, enrolls approximately 2000 students a year in a variety of undergraduate and graduate programs. Beal College, also in Bangor, is a small institution oriented toward career training. The Bangor Theological Seminary, founded in 1814, is the only accredited graduate school of religion in northern New England.
Bangor-based non-profit Peace through Interamerican Community Action (PICA) has sponsored a sister-city relationship between Bangor and Carasque, El Salvador since 1991, and many local groups have journied to El Salvador or participated in related initiatives, such as the PICA-sponsored Clean Clothes Campaign.[33] This anti-sweat shop movement, which originated in Europe, counted Bangor among its first American sites. Maine Gov. John Baldacci of Bangor was the first U.S. governor to sign an anti-sweatshop procurement law in 2001.
Bangor is also has a sister city relationship with nearby St. John, New Brunswick.
The U.S. Post Office in Bangor contains the three-part mural "Autumn Expansion" (1980) by noted artist Yvonne Jacquette.
[edit] Architecture
Bangor has a fascinating, mostly 19th-century cityscape, and sections of the city are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The city has also had a municipal Historic Preservation Commission since the early 1980s.
The Thomas Hill Standpipe, A huge elegant shingle-style structure, is visible from most parts of the city. Also prominent are the spires of the Hammond St. Congregational and Unitarian churches, built from similar designs by the Boston architectural firm Towle and Foster, and that of St. John's Church (Roman Catholic) constructed around the same time. The Bangor House Hotel, now converted to apartments, is the only survivor among a series of "Palace Hotels" designed by Boston architect Isaiah Rogers which were the first of their kind in the United States. Bangor also boasts the country's second oldest garden cemetery, the Mt. Hope Cemetery, designed by Charles G. Bryant.
Richard Upjohn, British-born architect and early promoter of the Gothic Revival, received some of his first commissions in Bangor, including the Isaac Farrar House (1833), Samuel Farrar House (1836), Thomas A. Hill House (presently owned by the Bangor Historical Society), and St. John's Church (Episcopal, 1836-39). The later was designed just prior to his most famous commission, Trinity Church in New York City. Upjohn was a founding member of the American Institute of Architects and its first president (1857-76).[34]
Other local landmarks include the Bangor Public Library by Peabody and Stearns; All Soul's Congregational Church by Cram, Goodhue, and Ferguson; the Wheelwright Block by Benjamin S. Deane; The Eastern Maine Insane Hospital by John Calvin Stevens. Bangor also contains many impressive Greek Revival. Victorian, and Colonial Revival houses, some of which are also listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The most photographed is the William Arnold House of 1856, Bangor's largest Italianate style mansion and home to author Stephen King. Its wrought-iron fence with bat and spider web motif is King's own addition.
The bow-plate of the battleship USS Maine, whose destruction in Havana, Cuba presaged the start of the Spanish-American War, survives on a granite memorial in a downtown park.
In the category "roadside architecture", Bangor has a huge, famous fiberglass-over-metal statue of mythical lumberman Paul Bunyan (Normand Martin, 1959) and one of only two Howard Johnson's restaurants left in the country.
[edit] Public safety
Ironically, this city associated with the novels of Stephen King is among the safest in the United States. Its crime rate is the second lowest among American metropolitan areas of comparable size.[35]
Beginning 19 January 2007 the city has banned smoking in automobiles if children under 18 are present. Offenders can be fined $50 under the ordinance. According to the New York Times, Bangor is "believed to be the first city to outlaw smoking in cars with children."[36]
[edit] Government
Bangor has a Council-Manager form of government, with a nine-member City Council. Three city councilors are elected to three-year terms each year. Although Bangor has no "Mayor", the Chair of the City Council is often informally referred to as the City's Mayor.
The current Chair of the City Council is Susan Hawes. The current City Manager is Ed Barrett.
In 1996, Bangor's City Council was the first in North America to unanimously approve a resolution opposing the sale of sweat-shop produced clothing in local stores.
Bangor and Augusta have together produced the largest number of Governors of Maine (nine each, including two non-consecutive terms by Edward Kent). This list includes the present governor, Democrat John Baldacci, and the last Republican governor, John R. McKernan. One governor from Augusta, Frederick W. Plaisted was born and raised in Bangor, as was Frederick Parkhurst, and a number of others (e.g. Hannibal Hamlin, Joshua Chamberlain, Israel Washburn) were born or lived in suburban towns such as Brewer, Hampden, and Orono.
[edit] Events
The Bangor State fair, held starting the last Friday of each July, for more than 150 years, is one of the country's oldest fairs, featuring agricultural exhibits, carnival attractions, and live performances.
In 2002, 2003, and 2004, Bangor was the host of the National Folk Festival. In August 2005, the newly created American Folk Festival began as an annual event on the city's waterfront.
The Kenduskeag Stream Canoe Race, a celebrated white-water event which begins just north of Bangor in the town of Kenduskeag, has been held annually for the last 40 years. Bangor also hosts an annual Soapbox Derby race.
[edit] Media
The Bangor region has a large number of media outlets for an area its size. The city has an unbroken history of newspaper publishing extending from 1815. Almost 30 dailies, weeklies, and monthlies had been launched there by the end of the Civil War .[37]
The Bangor Daily News was founded in the late nineteenth century, and is one of the few remaining family-owned newspapers left in the United States. Bangor Metro, founded in 2005, is the area's glossy business, lifestyle, and opinion magazine. The alternative/lifestyle weekly The Maine Edge also publishes in the city.
Bangor has more than a dozen radio stations and seven television stations, including WLBZ 2 (NBC), WABI 5 (CBS), WVII 7 (ABC), WBGR 33, and WFVX 22 (Fox). WMEB 12, licensed to nearby Orono, is the area's PBS member station. Radio stations WKIT (FM) and WZON (AM) are particularly notable for being owned by Zone Radio Corporation, a company owned by Bangor resident novelist Stephen King.
[edit] Sport and recreation
The Eastern Maine High School Basketball Tournament is held each February at the Bangor Auditorium drawing fans from central, eastern and northern Maine. The nearby University of Maine fields major college sports teams in football, ice hockey, baseball, and men's and women's basketball. Bangor has also been home to two minor league baseball teams in the past decade: the Bangor Blue Ox (1996-1997) and the Bangor Lumberjacks (2003-2004). Both were affiliated with the Northeast League that existed under that name from 1995-1998.
Bangor High School sports teams are traditionally strong competitors. In the state "class A" division of both baseball and basketball, Bangor holds the record for number of combined champion and runner-up showings. In football they share that record with South Portland. Both the boy's and the girl's swim teams have also tallied the most state-wide wins.
Bangor Raceway offers live harness racing and features an off-track betting center. Also, nearby Hollywood Slots is Maine's first slot machine gambling center. In 2007, construction began on a $131 million casino complex in Bangor that will house, among other things, a gaming floor featuring up to 1,500 slot machines, a seven-story hotel, and a four-level parking garage. The new racino is slated to open in the summer of 2008. Maine is one of few states where racinos are legal, and the one in Bangor is expected to change the city's tourism profile.
Every August (since 2002) Bangor has been home to the Senior League World Series.
Bangor has also been of historical importance to professional wrestling. Vince McMahon promoted his very first wrestling event in Bangor in 1979. In 1985, the WWC Universal Heavyweight Championship changed hands for the first time outside of Puerto Rico in Bangor at an IWCCW show.[38]
The Bangor City Forest and other nearby parks, forests and waterways support a wide variety of outdoor activities including hiking, sailing, canoeing, hunting, fishing, skiing, and snowmobiling.
The Penobscot has always been the premier salmon-fishing river in Maine, and the Bangor Salmon Pool traditionally sent the first fish caught to the President of the United States. Low fish stocks resulted in a ban on salmon fishing in 1999-2006 but the wild salmon population (and the sport) is slowly recovering. The Penobscot River Restoration Project is presently working to help the fish population by removing certain dams north of Bangor.[39]
[edit] Transportation
Bangor is located along I-95, US 1, US 2, and State Route 15. I-395 branches from I-95 and runs to the east. Three major bridges, including the Joshua Chamberlain Bridge and Penobscot River Bridge, connect Bangor to its neighbor Brewer.
Five major airlines offer over 60 flights a day to and from Bangor International Airport, giving the city non-stop service to Boston, Newark, Philadelphia, Detroit, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Orlando, and seasonal non-stop service to New York's LaGuardia Airport and Minneapolis. Most of the major car rental companies have desks at the airport.
Ferry service from nearby Bar Harbor connects the area with the Canadian province of Nova Scotia
Daily bus service provided by six companies connects Bangor with nearly all large surrounding towns and cities in Maine, as well as with Boston; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; and St. John, New Brunswick.
Public transportation within Bangor and to adjacent towns such as Orono is offered by the BAT Community Connector system. There is also a seasonal (summer) shuttle between Bangor and Bar Harbor.
[edit] Famous and notable Bangorians
[edit] Statesmen
Bangor is the hometown of Hannibal Hamlin, who served as Abraham Lincoln's first Vice President, and was a strong opponent of slavery. His statue stands in a downtown park, and his house is on the National Register of Historic Places. His daughter and son were present in Ford's Theatre the night Lincoln was shot. Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury, William P. Fessenden, practiced law in Bangor in the early 1830s.[40]
William Cohen, former U.S. Senator and United States Secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton, is a Bangor native. A local middle school is named in his honor.
The vice presidential candidate of the Green Party in the 2004 election, Patricia LaMarche was raised in Bangor. The first African-American elected to the Maine State Legislature was Bangor-born Gerald E. Talbot, who served 1972-78.
[edit] Writers
The most famous Bangor resident is undoubtedly Stephen King, the author best known for his horror-themed stories, novels, and movies. His wife, Tabitha Spruce-King, is also a writer, as are sons Joseph Hillstrom King (aka Joe Hill) and Owen King. The family donates a substantial amount of money to local libraries and hospitals and have funded a baseball stadium, Mansfield Stadium (home to the Senior League World Series), and the Beth Pancoe Aquatic Center, both on the grounds of Hayford Park, for the citizens (especially the children) of the city. King's fictional town, Derry, Maine, shares many points of correspondence with Bangor — the rivers, the Paul Bunyan Statue, the Thomas Hill Standpipe, the hospital — but is always referred to as separate from Bangor. King also features Bangor in many of his stories, such as The Langoliers and Storm of the Century. King owns radio stations WKIT and WZON.
Hayford Peirce, the science-fiction writer and nephew of Waldo Peirce, is likewise a Bangor native. Other contemporary novelists from Bangor include Christina Baker Kline,[41] Christopher Willard,[42] and Barbara Goldscheider.[43] Poet Sarah Ruth Jacobs and children's book author Bruce McMillan also grew up in Bangor.
Bangor had strong links to Transcendentalism through Frederick Henry Hedge, minister of the Congregational Church there in the 1830s. His circle, which included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, met as "Hedge's Club" or the Transcendental Club whenever Hedge returned to his native Cambridge, Massachusetts. Emerson had previously lectured in Bangor and Hedge took the position here on his advice.[44] Thoreau visited Bangor a number of times (his aunt and cousins also lived here) and describes the city in his book The Maine Woods.
Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Owen Davis (1874-1956) lived in Bangor until he was 15, and his prize-winning play Icebound (1923) is set in neighboring Veazie. Davis wrote between 200 and 300 plays, as well as radio and film scripts, and two autobiographies. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was president of the Author's League of America and the American Dramatist's Guild.[45]
Christine Goutiere Weston (1904-1989), author of ten novels, more than thirty short stories, and two non-fiction books (about Ceylon and Afghanistan), lived the latter part of her life in Bangor. She had been born in India and much of her fiction was set there.[46]
Blanche Willis Howard, a best-selling late nineteenth century novelist, was born and raised in Bangor. She eventually moved to Stuttgart, Germany and married the court physician to King Charles I of Wurttemberg, thus becoming the Baroness von Teuffel.
Eugene T. Sawyer, the "Prince of Dime Novelists", once lived in Bangor. In a 1902 interview, he claimed to have authored 75 examples of that genre, mostly for the Nick Carter series, once producing a 60,000 word novel in two days. His major innovation was to "begin the plot with the first word", i.e. "We will have the money, or she shall die!"[47]
Laura Jane Curtis Bullard, whose family started a successful patent medicine business in Bangor in the 1830s, eventually moved to Brooklyn and became a proto-feminist novelist and editor. She was a patron and confidante of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and took over editorship of their journal Revolution when it experienced financial difficulties.
Bangor-born Henry Payson Dowst (1872-1921) was a novelist and short-story writer, and saw a number of his stories made into silent films. One was The Dancin' Fool (1920) starring Wallace Reid. He spent his later life in a New York advertising agency, but was buried in Bangor.
Ruel Perley Smith, born in Bangor, was the author of the Rival Campers series of boy's book in the early 20th century. His regular job was as as night and Sunday editor of the New York World newspaper.
Ada Peirce McCormick, the younger sister of the Byzantine art authority Hayford Peirce, Sr. and of the artist Waldo Peirce, edited and published the quarterly Letter (1943-49), and contributed to magazines such as Harpers. She was also a philanthropist in Tucson, Arizona, where she spent most of her adult life, and at the University of Arizona.
Frances Parker Laughton Mace was a Bangor poet and writer in the 1850s. Her stone house became the original building of what is now the Eastern Maine Medical Center and still stands on its grounds.[48]
[edit] Artists
The painter and bohemian Waldo Peirce, confidante of Ernest Hemmingway, was from a prominent Bangor family.
Portrait painter Jeremiah Pearson Hardy (1800-1887), who apprenticed under Samuel F.B. Morse also lived and worked in Bangor for most of his career.[49] His children Anna Eliza Hardy and Francis William Hardy, and sister Mary Ann Hardy, were also part of a 19th century circle of Bangor painters.[50]
Walter Franklin Lansil studied under Hardy, and at the Academie Julian in Paris. He established a studio in Boston and became a celebrated landscape and marine artist. His brother Wilbur H. Lansil was also a painter and accompanied him to Boston.
Frederick Porter Vinton (1846-1911) left Bangor at age 14 for Boston, where he became that city's most sought-after portrait painter - producing over 300 canvases - and one of the original members of The Boston School. He studied in Munich and with Leon Bonnat in Paris, as well as with William Morris Hunt.
Award-winning illustrator and designer Murry Handler is a Bangor native.
[edit] Actors, directors, comedians, and sportscasters
Bangor is the birthplace of comedian Charles Rocket, who was a cast member on Saturday Night Live in the 1980-1981 season. Sportscaster Gary Thorne was also born here and once served as an assistant district attorney in the city. Actor Wayne Maunder, who played George Armstrong Custer in the late sixties television series Custer, and starred in Lancer, was raised in Bangor, as was actress Stephanie Niznik of the television series Everwood and the film Star Trek: Insurrection
Character actor Everett Glass (1891-1966) was born in Bangor. He appeared in over 70 films and television shows from the 1940s through the 1960s, including Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and episodes of Superman, Lassie, and Perry Mason.
Bangorean Leonard Horn (1926-1975) directed episodes of 39 television series and made-for-tv movies between 1961 and 1975, including Mission: Impossible, Mannix, It Takes A Thief, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Outer Limits, and Lost in Space.
Bangor-born actor Ralph Sipperly (ca.1890-1928) appeared in 10 films between 1923 and 1932, most of them silent, including the Academy Award winning Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans.
Pioneer local television comic and personality Eddie Driscoll, noted for his late-night fright-fest Wierd was paid this complement by Stephen King: "you warped my childhood".
Comedian Ed Wynn once ran out of money in Bangor and had to take a job playing piano in a local brothel.[51]
Actress Myrna Fahey (1933-1973), who was born in nearby Carmel, Maine, is buried at Mt. Pleasant Cemetary in Bangor. From the 1950s to the 1970s she appeared in over 40 films and television shows, including House of Usher (1960) where she co-starred with Vincent Price, and episodes of such series as Zorro, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Perry Mason, Batman, and The Time Tunnel. She dated Joe DiMaggio after his divorce from Marilyn Monroe.
Bangor-born Guy Niccolucci was one of 15 writers from the tv show Late Night with Conan O'Brian awarded an Emmy in 2007. Niccolucci also wrote for The Daily Show
Special effects man Christopher Mills of Bangor has contributed to such films as Evan Almighty, The Golden Compass, and Night at the Museum
[edit] Singers, musicians, and song-writers
Singer/songwriter Howie Day, who recorded the hit Collide, was born in Bangor, and got his start playing local clubs. Country singer Dick Curless, who recorded the 1965 hit Tombstone Every Mile, also lived there.
George Frederick Root (1820-95), a noted Civil War era composer of songs such as The Battle Cry of Freedom, lived in Bangor before becoming a successful music publisher in Chicago. John Wheeler Tufts (1825-1906), a Leipzig-trained musician who early in his career was an organist and composer in Bangor, eventually co-authored the Normal Music Course (1883), which revolutionized music training in American public schools. John Edgar Gould (1820-75), and Daniel H. Mansfield (1810-1855), and were two other local composers/arrangers whose songs were published nationally in the 19th century.[52] Bangor-born music teacher Sarah Robinson Duff, who made her career in Chicago, discovered and cultivated the great early-20th century opera diva Mary Garden.
Rudolph Ringwall, Associate Conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra 1934-56, was born in Bangor. Berlin-born Werner Torkanowsky, director of the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra, came to Bangor in 1981 to direct the Bangor Symphony and did so until his death in 1992.
Kay Gardner (1941-2002), flutist and pioneering composer of 'healing music' lived and died in Bangor. She was also a Priestess of the Fellowship of Isis and founder of Bangor's Temple of the Feminine Divine.
[edit] Athletes
Bangor is the home of Toronto Blue Jays hitter Matt Stairs. Major League baseball player Matt Kinney of the (Minnesota Twins, Milwaukee Brewers, and Kansas City Royals) is also a native, as is Jon DiSalvatore, of the NHL (now with the Phoenix Coyotes).
Former Major League baseball players born in Bangor include Bobby Messenger (1901-1964) of the Chicago White Sox and St. Louis Browns; Jack Sharrott (1869-1927) of the New York Giants and Philadelphia Phillies; and Pat O'Connell (1861-1943) of the Baltimore Orioles. Shortstop Mike Bordick, who played for the Oakland Athletics, New York Mets, Baltimore Orioles, and Toronto Bluejays, grew up in the adjacent towns of Winterport and Hampden, and was a star player on the University of Maine team in nearby Orono.
Professional Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) Fighter Marcus Davis and his Team Irish currently call Bangor their home. Ohio Wesleyan University football coach Mike Hollway was born in Bangor. Jerry "The Hammer" Smith, former Bangor boxer, is Chief of Ushers at Fenway Park (home of the Red Sox in Boston.
Kevin Mahaney of Bangor won a silver medal in sailing at the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, and went on to reach the finals of the America's Cup trials with his Bangor-based PACT-95 team.
Jack McAuliffe, World Lightweight Boxing Champion in the 1880s-90s and known as "The Napolean of the Ring", learned to fight growing up as a child in a tough Bangor neighborhood. He retired with an unbeaten record. Another local boxer, Michael Daley, became Lightweight Boxing Champion of New England, but was arrested in Bangor in 1903, along with George La Blanche, the former Middleweight Champion of the World, for robbing a man at a local hotel.
In the 1890s, Henry Orman Robinson of Bangor was Head Coach of the University of Texas football team, the Texas Longhorns, and before that the University of Missouri team, the Missouri Tigers.
Karen Colburn of Bangor was Girl's National Free-Style Ski Champion in 1975.
[edit] Scholars
- See also: #Clergymen and missionaries
The "Father of American Sociology", Albion Woodbury Small, attended grade-school in Bangor. He was the first American professor of sociology, founder of the first dept. of sociology (at the University of Chicago), edited the discipine's first American journal, and was President of the American Sociological Society (1912-13).[53]
Edith Lesley, founder of Lesley University in Massachusetts, grew up in Bangor.
University of Maine psychologist Doris Allen (1901-2002), who was born in nearby Old Town, and practiced at the Bangor Mental Health Institute in the 1970s, was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for founding the Children's International Summer Villages. She was also President of the International Council of Psychologists.[54]
Elliott Carr Cutler (1888-1947), son of a Bangor lumber merchant, became Chairman of the Dept. of Surgery at Harvard Medical School and a pioneer in cardiac surgery, i