HistoricSiteMarkers

Historic Markers in Maine

41 markers in the database.

A. J. β€œAllie” Cole Scenic Overlook

T1 R6 WELS, ME

This overlook honors A. J. 'Allie' Cole, remembered as a pioneer of transportation in the Maine north woods. In 1917 he launched horse-drawn mail, freight, and passenger service between Enfield and Burlington, and by the 1920s he was hauling freight in motor trucks as far north as Houlton. His career traces the everyday revolution that carried rural Maine from the horse to the internal-combustion engine.

All Wars Monument

South Bristol, ME

This granite memorial in the small fishing town of South Bristol honors Wellington MacFarland Jordan, a young infantryman who was born in 1891 and died in service at Camp Devens, Massachusetts, in his early twenties. A local road was renamed in his memory, and the town later broadened the monument to salute all its veterans across every American conflict. It reflects the way small New England communities wove a single lost son's name into a lasting tribute to collective service.

Andover Civil War Memorial

Andover, ME

In the small western Maine town of Andover, this memorial honors the local men who served in the Civil War from 1861 to 1865. Like countless New England villages, Andover sent a disproportionate share of its young men to fill the Union ranks, and their absence and loss reshaped the community for a generation. The monument keeps their service in the town's collective memory.

Arthur Noble Memorial

Nobleboro, ME

This monument honors Arthur Noble, a Lieutenant Colonel of the Second Massachusetts Regiment who took part in the 1745 siege and capture of the French fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island. The expedition, mounted largely by New England colonial militia, was one of the most striking colonial military feats of the era, seizing a stronghold thought nearly impregnable. Noble, a settler of the Maine coast, was among the New Englanders drawn into the imperial wars between Britain and France.

Bass Harbor Head Light Station

Tremont, ME

Bass Harbor Head Light has guided mariners along the rocky Maine coast since 1858, perched on granite ledges at the southwestern edge of Mount Desert Island. Built in the antebellum era of expanding American maritime trade, it warned fishing boats and coasters away from a treacherous shore. Its listing on the National Register recognizes both its engineering and its enduring place in New England's seafaring identity.

Battery Blair

Cape Elizabeth, ME

Completed in 1903, Battery Blair was part of the ring of coastal artillery fortifications built to defend Portland Harbor at the dawn of the twentieth century, when the United States modernized its seacoast defenses with heavy disappearing and barbette guns. It was named for Francis P. Blair Jr., a Missouri politician who served as a general in the Mexican and Civil Wars before entering the U.S. Senate. Its two twelve-inch guns stood guard over the approaches to Casco Bay.

Baxter Pines Monument

Portland, ME

In the early 1920s, Maine Governor Percival Proctor Baxter gave this stand of pines to the City of Portland to be held forever as a public grove and bird sanctuary. Baxter, a lifelong conservationist, is best remembered for later donating the vast wilderness around Mount Katahdin that became Baxter State Park.

Bethel Fire Bell

Bethel, ME

This bell rang out over Bethel, Maine, beginning in 1896, calling volunteers to fight fires in an age when a single blaze could threaten an entire wooden village. The fire department and bicentennial committee re-dedicated it in 1997, tying it to the town's incorporation more than two centuries earlier. It survives as a tangible link to the days of hand-pulled hose carts and neighbor-summoned firefighting.

Bethel War Memorial

Bethel, ME

This memorial in Bethel, Maine, offers thanks to all the men and women of the community who served the country honorably in both war and peace. Rather than naming a single conflict, it gathers generations of local veterans under one grateful tribute, a common form for New England town greens.

Blue Star Memorial

Boothbay Harbor, ME

This Blue Star Memorial pays tribute to the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces. The Blue Star program began in 1945, when garden clubs planted memorial highways honoring the service members of World War II; it takes its name from the blue-star service flags families hung in their windows for loved ones in uniform. The tributes later broadened to salute those who have served in all of America's wars.

Boothbay Harbor War Memorial

Boothbay Harbor, ME

Erected in 1953 and re-dedicated on July 4, 1991, this memorial in the Maine coastal village of Boothbay Harbor honors the men and women who served their country in all wars and conflicts. Set in a seafaring town, it gathers generations of local service under a single tribute rather than naming one war.

Bowdoin War Memorial

Brunswick, ME

On the Bowdoin College campus in Brunswick, this memorial honors the generations of Bowdoin students and graduates who left the classroom to serve their country, and remembers those who never returned. From the Civil War through the wars of the twentieth century, the small Maine college sent its sons into national service far out of proportion to its size.

Cape Elizabeth War Memorial

Cape Elizabeth, ME

This memorial honors the men and women of Cape Elizabeth, Maine, who served in the armed forces across two centuries, from the American Revolution through the Persian Gulf War. The span 1775–1975 traces the town's contribution to every major American conflict, a roll call of service that touched generation after generation of a small coastal community. Such town memorials gather the whole sweep of a place's wartime sacrifice into a single place of remembrance.

Captain Hanson Gregory

Rockport, ME

In the seafaring town of Rockport on the Maine coast, local lore credits sea captain Hanson Gregory with punching the first hole in a fried doughnut in 1847, supposedly so the dense center would finally cook through. The claim is celebrated but contested, one of many folk origin stories for the ring-shaped treat. This monument keeps Rockport's tie to the legend alive.

Castine Civil War Monument

Castine, ME

In the small coastal town of Castine, on a peninsula that had seen British occupation in earlier wars, residents raised this monument to the local men who marched off to the Civil War between 1861 and 1865. Like hundreds of New England towns, Castine sent its sons and sailors to fight for the Union, and many never returned. The inscription's closing lineβ€”paraphrasing the biblical passage in which Roman citizenship was bought 'with a great sum'β€”frames the survival of the United States as a costly-won freedom purchased through their sacrifice.

Champlain Monument

Mount Desert, ME

This monument honors Samuel de Champlain, the French soldier, navigator, and administrator who explored the coast of what is now Maine in the early 1600s and gave Mount Desert Island its name for its bare, rocky summits. Champlain's voyages opened the way for French settlement in North America and mapped a coastline that European powers would contest for generations. He is best remembered as the founder of Quebec and a central figure in the story of New France.

Chief Polin Memorial

Westbrook, ME

This memorial honors Chief Polin, an 18th-century leader of the Presumpscot people of the Sebago Lake region of Maine. Polin pressed colonial authorities to stop the dams and settlements that were choking off the salmon runs his community depended on, and he was killed in 1756 during the frontier fighting of that era. The marker keeps his name on the land his people long inhabited.

Civil War Memorial

Freeport, ME

This monument honors the soldiers and sailors of Freeport, Maine, who served the Union during the Civil War of 1861-1865. Like scores of New England towns, Freeport sent its young men to the front and raised a memorial to their sacrifice. Such monuments became civic anchors in town centers across the North in the decades after the war.

Civil War Memorial

Scarborough, ME

This monument in Scarborough remembers the town's sons who fought to preserve the Union during the Civil War, the conflict that from 1861 to 1865 cost more American lives than any other. Like countless New England towns, Scarborough sent its young men south, and after the war raised a lasting tribute to their service and sacrifice.

Civil War Monument

Lincoln, ME

This monument in the Maine town of Lincoln honors local men who marched off to the Civil War, the conflict that the inscription describes as preserving the Union, destroying slavery, and upholding the Constitution. Small northern communities like Lincoln sent a remarkable share of their young men into the ranks between 1861 and 1865, and memorials like this rose across New England in the decades afterward. The plain, resolute language captures how the war's meaning was understood by the generation that fought it.

Civil War Monument

Augusta, ME

Erected by the City of Augusta in 1881, this monument honors the local men who died fighting to preserve the Union in the Civil War. Like hundreds of soldiers' monuments raised across the North in the war's aftermath, it was meant to fix their sacrifice in public memory and "commend their example" to the generations that followed. Its dedication came as Maine, and the nation, worked to make sense of a conflict that had claimed so many of its sons.

Eden's Civil War Monument

Bar Harbor, ME

Bar Harbor, Maine, was known as the town of Eden until 1918, and this monument honors the local men who served the Union during the Civil War of 1861–1865. Like countless New England communities, Eden sent its sons south to fight, and the plain dedication 'In Memory of Eden's Sons' speaks to how the war reached even the smallest coastal towns.

Fishermen's Memorial

Boothbay Harbor, ME

On the working waterfront of Boothbay Harbor, this memorial honors the generations of independent Maine fishermen who never returned from the sea. Fishing has been the lifeblood of Maine's rocky coast since colonial times, and the dangers of the North Atlantic have always taken their toll on the small-boat crews who chase cod, lobster, and herring. The tribute speaks to a proud, self-reliant maritime culture that still defines the region.

Fort Mary Monument

Biddeford, ME

This Daughters of the American Revolution monument marks the site of Fort Mary, a garrison that stood at Winter Harbor in Biddeford beginning around 1700. Small wooden forts like this guarded Maine's exposed frontier through the long series of colonial wars among English settlers, the French, and their Native allies. For generations the fort offered refuge to a coastal community repeatedly caught in the crossfire of empire.

Gorham Civil War Monument

Gorham, ME

Erected in 1866 by Honorable Toppan Robie, this monument honors the sons of Gorham who died in the Civil War, then still fresh in memory as "the Great Rebellion of 1861." Maine sent a remarkably high share of its men to the Union cause, and towns like Gorham paid dearly in the war's battles. Raised just a year after Appomattox, it is among the earliest generation of Civil War memorials.

Honor the Brave Memorial

Bath, ME

Erected by the City of Bath in 1867, just two years after the Civil War's end, this monument honors local men who died in the conflict. Its inscription borrows Abraham Lincoln's own words from the Gettysburg Address, tying a small Maine shipbuilding city to the national reckoning over the war's meaning. Bath sent many sons to the Union cause, and communities across the North raised such memorials in the war's immediate aftermath.

Lieutenant Frothingham Memorial

Portland, ME

Lieutenant Philip B. Frothingham of Portland, Maine, was born in 1894 and died in France on September 14, 1918, in the closing months of World War I. His body was brought home and buried in Evergreen Cemetery in 1920, and a local Veterans of Foreign Wars post was named in his honor.

Maine Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Augusta, ME

Dedicated on October 19, 1985, the Maine Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Augusta was built by ordinary citizens to honor those who served in the Vietnam War and all who were touched by it. Its dedication came at a moment when the nation, after years of division, was finally building public memorials to reconcile with the war and its veterans. The inscription deliberately widens its embrace beyond soldiers to families and communities scarred by the conflict.

Mayor Baxter Woods Memorial

Portland, ME

Governor Percival Proctor Baxter donated this Portland woodland in memory of his father, James Phinney Baxter (1831–1921), a noted historian and philanthropist who served six terms as the city's mayor. Held in trust as a public park, the woods honor a family whose civic leadership shaped Portland across generations.

Old Windmill Stone (1745)

Portland, ME

This stone was salvaged from an old windmill that stood in 1745 on a high bluff across the way, in the era when colonial Falmouth (later Portland) was a small, exposed settlement on the frontier of coastal Maine. Wind-powered mills were essential machinery in such a community, grinding the grain that fed families before larger water mills and towns took hold. The marker preserves a physical fragment of that vanished colonial landscape.

Orrington Town Pound (1807)

Orrington, ME

Built in 1807, the Orrington pound is a survivor of everyday life in early New England. A town pound was a sturdy walled enclosure where stray livestock were held until their owners paid a fine to reclaim themβ€”a small but essential piece of local governance in the young republic, when animals often roamed on open range.

Phinney Park

Gorham, ME

Phinney Park in Gorham gathers memorial tablets honoring figures tied to the town's history, among them Capt. John Phinney, an early settler of this colonial-era Maine community, and a dedication to the Gorham Library Association. It is a small civic space layering generations of local remembrance in one spot.

Princeton War Monument

Princeton, ME

The town of Princeton in eastern Maine raised this monument to honor all of its war veterans, without singling out any one conflict. It stands as a small community's collective salute to the neighbors who left the woods and waterways of Washington County to serve.

Rachel Carson

Wells, ME

This memorial on the Maine coast honors Rachel Carson, the marine biologist and writer whose books β€” from "The Sea Around Us" to "Silent Spring" β€” reshaped how Americans understood the natural world. The quoted lines capture her central insight: that all life on Earth is bound together, an idea that helped launch the modern environmental movement. The national wildlife refuge that bears her name protects the salt marshes and estuaries she loved.

Shorey Park β€” Harry Shorey Memorial

Bridgton, ME

Shorey Park was named to preserve the memory of Harry Shorey (1877–1952), remembered as a county editor and community leader. As a small-town newspaperman in the early twentieth century, Shorey would have shaped local opinion and civic life at a time when the county paper was the central forum for news, debate, and community identity in rural Maine.

Soldier's Monument

Hermon, ME

This monument in Hermon, Maine, was raised by local Civil War veterans in memory of the townsmen who defended the Union between 1861 and 1865. Like hundreds of New England villages, Hermon sent a share of its young men into the war, and returning survivors later gathered to honor the fallen with a lasting stone β€” a common ritual of remembrance in the war's aftermath.

South Portland Civil War Memorial

South Portland, ME

Dedicated in 1897, this memorial honors the South Portland men who served the Union as soldiers and sailors between 1861 and 1865. Maine sent a remarkable share of its sons to the Civil War, and its coastal towns supplied the navy as readily as the army. A generation after the guns fell silent, the community raised this tribute to fix that sacrifice in stone.

Winter Harbor Naval Security Group Station

Gouldsboro, ME

On the coast of Down East Maine, this site housed a U.S. Navy communications and signals-intelligence station that operated from 1935 until 2002. Through World War II and the long decades of the Cold War, its antennas along the Atlantic quietly gathered and relayed the kind of intelligence that rarely made headlines but shaped national security.