History of Portland, Maine

The peninsula and surrounding areas were home to members of the Algonquian-speaking Aucocisco branch of the Eastern Abenaki tribe, who died largely due to the introduction of foreign illnesses during colonization.

French explorer Samuel de Champlain identified these people as the "Almouchiquois," a polity stretching from the Androscoggin River to Cape Ann and culturally distinct from their Wampanoag and Abenaki neighbors.

According to Captain John Smith in 1614, a semi-autonomous band called the “Aucocisco” inhabited "the bottome of a large deepe Bay, full of many great Iles."

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

Starting around 1607, Micmacs began raiding their southern neighbors from the Gulf of Maine to Massachusetts in an effort to corner the lucrative fur trade and monopolize access to European goods.

He then spent a month with David Thompson at Piscataqua where he assembled men who had arrived earlier to survey the Gulf of Maine for a suitable site to build a trading house.

[13] On October 18, 1775, the community was destroyed yet again, bombarded for 9 hours during the Revolutionary War by the Royal Navy's HMS Canceaux under command of Lieutenant Henry Mowat.

[15][16] Following the war, a section of Falmouth called The Neck developed as a commercial port and began to grow rapidly as a shipping center.

Reuben Ruby and other free African Americans founded the Abyssinian Meeting House in 1828 on Newbury Street in the East End.

[17] In 1851, Maine led the nation by passing the first state law to prohibit the sale of alcohol except for "medicinal, mechanical or manufacturing purposes."

Between 1,000 and 3,000 people opposed to the law gathered because Neal S. Dow, the mayor of Portland and a Maine Temperance Society leader, had authorized a shipment of $1,600 of "medicinal and mechanical alcohol."

Portland became the primary ice-free winter seaport for Canadian exports upon completion of the Grand Trunk Railway to Montreal in 1853.

Canadian export traffic was diverted from Portland to Halifax, Nova Scotia following nationalization of the Grand Trunk system in 1923; and 20th-century icebreakers later enabled ships to reach Montreal throughout the winter.

Portland's period of greatest cosmopolitan prominence was in the first four decades of the nineteenth century, when the city was "a rival, and not a satellite of either Boston or New York.

[23] Other notable literary or artistic figures who got their start or were at their prime in that period include Grenville Mellen, Nathaniel Parker Willis, Seba Smith, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Benjamin Paul Akers, Charles Codman, Franklin Simmons, John Rollin Tilton, and Harrison Bird Brown.

The Great Fire of July 4, 1866, ignited during the Independence Day celebration, destroyed most of the commercial buildings in the city, half the churches and hundreds of homes.

[24] The quality and style of architecture in Portland is in large part due to the succession of well-known 19th-century architects who worked in the city.

[26] Casco Bay became destroyer base Sail when the United States Navy began escorting HX, SC, and ON convoys of the Battle of the Atlantic.

Unused piers adjacent to the Grand Trunk Railway yard were converted to training facilities for combat information center (CIC), night visual lookouts, surface and aircraft recognition, search and fire control radar operators, gunnery spotting, anti-aircraft machine guns, and anti-submarine warfare (ASW) attack.

This was a mixed blessing for locals, protecting the city's character (chain stores are often uninterested in it now) but led to a number of empty storefronts.

In recent years, Congress Street has become home to more stores and eateries, spurred on by the expanding Maine College of Art and the conversion of office buildings to high-end condos.

The subsequent trial of Gurney resulted in legislative changes which allowed greater flexibility for Maine judges when sentencing convicted murderers.