A northern suburb of Portland, Falmouth borders Casco Bay and offers one of the largest anchorages in Maine.

At the time of European contact in the sixteenth century, people speaking a western dialect of the Wabanaki language inhabited present-day Falmouth.

English explorer Christopher Levett met with the Aucocisco Sagamore Skittery Gusset at his summer village at the Presumpscot Falls in 1623.

A combination of warfare and disease decimated Native peoples in the years before English colonization, creating a shatter zone of devastation and political instability in what would become southern Maine.

Warfare soon broke out among groups such as the Mi'kmaq and Penobscot who sought to subjugate their neighbors by monopolizing access to European goods.

Native peoples were not totally destroyed however, maintaining a visible presence in the Casco Bay area until King George's War in the 1740s.

Falmouth’s early years were marked by extreme violence as it lay on a borderland zone between Europeans and Native Americans.

When the Massachusetts Bay Colony took political control of Maine in 1658 from the heirs of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, they renamed the area Falmouth after an important Parliamentarian victory in the English Civil War.

Massachusetts built the fort at the behest of local Abenaki desiring a convenient place to trade and repair tools and weapons.

Governor Joseph Dudley held a conference at New Casco with representatives of the Abenaki tribes on June 20, 1703, trying to convince them not to ally with the French.

His efforts were unsuccessful, as the fort was besieged only two months later by Abenaki Sagamores Moxus, Wanungonet, Assacombuit and their French Allies during the Northeast Coast Campaign.

The majority of the first permanent European inhabitants to the town came after 1740, quickly growing to "62 families" and forming their own parish in 1753 (currently the Falmouth Congregational Church).

Population had grown by the 1760s to the extent that separate church parishes had formed, creating rival communities more attuned to local concerns.

[8] The extension of trolley service from Portland to the Falmouth Foreside in 1898 initiated the town's transformation from a rural community to an urban consumer society.

Trolleys cemented Falmouth’s economic connection to Portland and transformed the Foreside neighborhood into a relaxation spot for nearby city dwellers.

To promote its line, the Portland and Yarmouth Electric Railway Company opened Underwood Spring Park north of Town Landing in 1899.

Military personnel who moved to the town while Casco Bay was base Sail for America’s destroyer fleet from 1941 to 1944 bolstered much of this growth.

Falmouth’s location on the ocean, along with its respected public school system, has made it one of the more attractive communities in Greater Portland.

The Baxter School for the Deaf occupies the center of the island and the remainder is a State park accessible to the public, with an oceanside walking trail around the perimeter.

Clapboard Island, located a mile off Falmouth Town Land and accessible by kayak and canoe, includes a nature preserve administered by the Maine Coast Heritage Trust.