Bangor ( ) is the county seat and largest city of Penobscot County, Maine, United States. The city proper has a population of 31,753, making it the state's third-most populous city, behind Portland (68,408) and Lewiston (37,121). Bangor is known as the "Queen City".
Modern Bangor was established in the mid-19th century with the lumber and shipbuilding industries. Due to the city's location on the Penobscot River, logs could be floated downstream from the Maine North Woods and processed at the city's water-powered sawmills, then shipped from Bangor's port to the Atlantic Ocean downstream, and from there to any port in the world. Evidence of this is still visible in the lumber barons' elaborate Greek Revival and Victorian mansions and the 31-foot-high (9.4 m) statue of Paul Bunyan. Today, Bangor's economy is based on services and retail, healthcare, and education.
Bangor has a port of entry at Bangor International Airport, also home to the Bangor Air National Guard Base. Historically Bangor was an important stopover on the Great Circle Air Route between the U.S. East Coast and Europe.
Name and pronunciation Founded as Kenduskeag Plantation in 1791, Bangor was incorporated as a town in 1834. The name Bangor is said to have been taken from a Welsh hymn tune. It is also the name of the city of Bangor, Gwynedd ("bangor" in Old Welsh means "wattled enclosure").
The final syllable is pronounced gor. In 2015, local celebrities and business owners recorded the YouTube video "How to Say Bangor", which was sung to the tune of "We Are the World".
History
Indigenous heritage The Penobscot people have inhabited the area around present-day Bangor for at least 11,000 years and continue to occupy tribal land on the nearby Penobscot Indian Island Reservation. The Penobscot traditionally call the Bangor area kkάtaskkik, meaning "at/on the water parsnip ground," which European colonists rendered in English as Kenduskeag. The Penobscot practiced some agriculture but relied more heavily on hunting and gathering than indigenous peoples in warmer southern New England.
Contact with Europeans began in the 16th century through the lucrative fur trade, as the Penobscot traded pelts for European goods. The first documented European exploration of the area was conducted by Estêvão Gomes, a Portuguese navigator in Spanish service, in 1524. Samuel de Champlain followed in 1605. The Jesuits established a mission on Penobscot Bay in 1609 as part of the French colony of Acadia. The Penobscot River valley remained contested between France and Britain until the 1750s.
Early settlement European settlement began in 1769 when Jacob Buswell established a community at the future site of Bangor. By 1772, twelve families lived in the settlement alongside a sawmill, store, and school. The population grew to 567 by 1787. Initially known as Sunbury or Kenduskeag Plantation, the community was incorporated as Bangor in 1791. The name "Bangor" is the Welsh word for wattled enclosure. It shares the name of Bangor, Gwynedd, the oldest city in Wales as well as Bangor, County Down in Northern Ireland. In the Irish language, Bangor is an anglicisation of Beannchar, meaning 'horned curve' referring to the shoreline of a bay.
Revolutionary War and War of 1812 During the American Revolutionary War, Bangor played a role in the Penobscot Expedition of 1779. When the expedition failed, ten American naval vessels fled up the Penobscot River and were scuttled near Bangor to prevent capture by British forces. The ship remains lay undisturbed until construction of the Joshua Chamberlain Bridge in the late 1950s exposed the archaeological site. Six cannons were recovered from the riverbed; five remain on display in the region.
During the War of 1812, British forces under Robert Barrie briefly occupied Bangor in 1814 following the Battle of Hampden. Maine remained part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts until 1820, when it was admitted to the Union as the 23rd state under the Missouri Compromise.
Lumber boom era The mid-19th century marked Bangor's emergence as a major lumber center. The Penobscot River drainage basin proved ideal for the timber industry despite being unsuitable for agriculture. Winter snow allowed horse teams to drag logs from forests to the Penobscot River and its tributaries. Log driving during spring snowmelt transported timber to water-powered sawmills upriver from Bangor. The processed lumber was then shipped from Bangor's port to markets worldwide.
Bangor's strategic location at the head of navigation on the Penobscot River—where rapids met tidal waters—made it an ideal shipping point. Local capitalists owned much of the region's forestland, and Bangor-built ships carried lumber to East Coast cities, the Caribbean, and California during the California Gold Rush. The lumber trade established connections that led to the founding of communities named Bangor in Washington, California, and Nevada.
By 1860, Bangor had become the world's largest lumber port. The city operated 150 sawmills along the river and shipped over 150 million board feet of lumber annually. In 1860 alone, 3,300 lumber ships passed through Bangor's docks. The prosperity of the lumber trade enabled the construction of elaborate Greek Revival and Victorian mansions, many of which survive in the Broadway Historic District. This architectural heritage contributed to Bangor's nickname, "The Queen City of the East."
The Aroostook War of 1838–1839, a boundary dispute between the United States and Britain, highlighted the growing importance of Maine's lumber industry. Bangor emerged as both a lumbering boomtown and a potential rival to Portland's political dominance in the state.
Civil War era The American Civil War significantly impacted Bangor. In 1861, a mob attacked the offices of the Bangor Daily Union, a Democratic newspaper whose editor Marcellus Emery held Southern sympathies. The attackers destroyed the presses and burned equipment in the street, forcing the paper to suspend publication until after the war.
Bangor contributed substantially to the Union war effort. The locally recruited 2nd Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment was among the first units to leave Maine in 1861 and participated in the First Battle of Bull Run. The 1st Maine Heavy Artillery Regiment, also mustered in Bangor, suffered the highest casualties of any Union regiment during the war, particularly at the Second Battle of Petersburg in 1864. The 20th Maine Infantry Regiment achieved fame for its defense of Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg under Joshua Chamberlain, for whom a local bridge is named. Bangor native Charles A. Boutelle accepted the surrender of Confederate naval forces after the Battle of Mobile Bay.
Industrial diversification Beyond lumber, 19th-century Bangor developed diverse manufacturing capabilities. The city became a leading producer of moccasins, shipping over 100,000 pairs annually by the 1880s. Other exports included bricks, leather, and ice, which was harvested in winter and shipped to markets as distant as China, the West Indies, and South America.
Despite its success, Bangor faced geographic limitations. As a northern river port, it froze during winter months and could not accommodate the largest ocean-going vessels. The sparse settlement of its forested hinterland also limited the local market compared to competitors like Portland, Maine.
In 1844, the first ocean-going iron-hulled steamship in the United States was named The Bangor. Built by Harlan and Hollingsworth in Wilmington, Delaware, the vessel was designed for passenger service between Bangor and Boston. However, on its second voyage in 1845, the ship burned near Castine. Though rebuilt in Bath, it was soon sold to the U.S. government for service in the Mexican–American War.
Local industry innovation continued into the early 20th century. Bangor's Hinkley & Egery Ironworks (later Union Ironworks) developed a steam engine called the "Endeavor" that won a gold medal at the New York Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1856. Union Iron Works engineer Don A. Sargent invented the first automotive snow plow in the 1920s, which the company manufactured for national distribution.
Decline and transition The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw Bangor's economy transition as the pulp and paper industry replaced traditional lumbering, and railroads superseded river transportation for moving goods.David Clayton Smith, A History of Lumbering in Maine, 1861–1960 (Orono: University of Maine Press, 1972) Local investors supported railroad development, including the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad, which opened northern Aroostook County to settlement and economic development.
Major fires periodically disrupted the city's development, with significant blazes in 1856, 1869, and 1872. The Great Fire of 1911 proved most devastating, destroying Bangor's high school, post office, public library, telephone and telegraph companies, banks, two fire stations, nearly 100 businesses, six churches, a synagogue, and 285 private residences across 55 acres. The subsequent rebuilding created an architectural showcase featuring diverse styles including Mansard, Beaux-Arts, Greek Revival, and Colonial Revival, now preserved as the Great Fire of 1911 Historic District.
Geography According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and is water.
A potential advantage that has always eluded exploitation is the city's location between the port city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and 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 Railway opened through Bangor, with President Ulysses S. Grant officiating at the inauguration, but commerce never lived up to the potential. More recent 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 travel north of Maine rather than across it.
Urban development Fires Major fires struck the downtown in 1856,The New York Times, "The Bangor Fires", July 1, 1856, p. 1 1869,Hartford Weekly Times, January 9, 1869, p. 1 and 1872,The Bangor Fire The New York Times, October 13, 1872 the last resulting in the erection of the Adams-Pickering Block. In the Great Fire of 1911 Bangor lost its high school, post office & custom house, public library, telephone and telegraph companies, banks, two fire stations, nearly a hundred businesses, six churches, and synagogue and 285 private residences over a total of 55 acres (23 ha.) The area was rebuilt, and in the process became a showplace for a diverse range of architectural styles, including the Mansard style, Beaux Arts, Greek Revival and Colonial Revival, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Great Fire of 1911 Historic District.
Urban renewal The destruction of downtown landmarks such as the old city hall and train station in the late 1960s urban renewal program is now considered to have been a mistake. It ushered in a decline of the city center that was 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, with bookstores, café/restaurants, galleries, and museums filling once-vacant storefronts. The recent re-development of the city's waterfront has also helped re-focus cultural life in the historic center.
Hydrology