Population		N.  Latitude	45:41:10
1970	33,168	W. Longitude	67:58:35
		Penobscot County
1980	31,643	Maine House Dist.	117,118, 119,120
		Maine Senate Dist.	9
1990	33,181	Congress District	2
2000	31,473	Area in square mi.	34.6
		Population/sq.mi.	914

 

Statehood began a period of explosive population growth, slowing only forty years later:

Congressional Medal of Honor winners: Civil War
THOMAS BELCHER; FRANCIS S. HESSELTINE; THOMAS TAYLOR; SIDNEY W. THAXTER; HENRY W. WHEELER.

Indian Wars HENRY J. HYDE

Interim 1976 CHARLES GIDDING

National Register of Historic Places - Selected Images from Bangor, All Listings

Adams-Pickering Block 5/2/74
 Corner of Main and Middle Streets 
All Souls Congregational Church
 6/18/92, 10 Broadway 
Bangor Children's Home 9/9/75
 218 Ohio Street 
Bangor Fire Engine House No. 6 4/7/88, 284 Center Street 
Bangor Hose House No. 5 9/11/97
 247 State Street 
Bangor House 2/23/72
 174 Main Street 
Bangor Mental Health Institute 7/16/87, 656 State Street 
Bangor Standpipe 8/30/74
 Jackson St 
Bangor Theological Seminary
 Historic District 8/2/77, Union Street 
Battleship Maine Monument 10/8/99
 Junction of Main and Cedar Streets 
Blake House 10/31/7, 107 Court Street 
Broadway Historic District 5/7/73
 Bounded by Garland, Essex, State, Park and Center Streets 
Bryant, Charles G., Double House
 6/20/86, 16--18 Division Street 
Connors House 10/6/83, 277 State Street 
Farrar, Samuel, House 5/23/74
 123 Court Street 
Godfrey-Kellogg House 6/18/73
 212 Kenduskeag Avenue 
Grand Army Memorial Home 10/31/72, 159 Union Street 
Great Fire of 1911 Historic District
 6/14/84, Harlow, Center, Park, State,
 York, and Central Streets 
Hamlin, Hannibal, House 10/9/79, 15 5th Street 
Hammond Street Congregation Church 7/8/82, Hammond and High Streets 
Jenkins, Charles W., House 9/18/90,  67 Pine Street 
Jonas Cutting-Edward Kent House
 4/2/73, 48-50 Penobscot Street 
Low, Joseph W., House 12/4/73
 51 Highland Street 
Morse & Co. Office Building 4/2/73
 Harlow Street 
Morse Bridge 2/16/70, Valley Avenue, over Kenduskeag Stream 
Mount Hope Cemetery District 12/4/74, U.S. 2
Penobscot Expedition Site 4/23/73
 Address Restricted  Bangor-Brewer 
Sargent--Roberts House 12/13/96
 178 State Street 
Smith, Zebulon, House 1/21/74
 55 Summer Street 
St. John's Catholic Church 4/2/73
 York Street 
Symphony House 10/26/72, 166 Union Street 
Veazie, Jones P., House 6/23/88, 88 Fountain Street 
Wardwell--Trickey Double House
 6/18/92,  97--99 Ohio Street 
West Market Square Historic District
 12/27/79,  W. Market Sq. 
Wheelwright Block 7/18/74, 34 Hammond Street 
Whitney Park Historic District 10/13/88, Roughly bounded by 8th, Union, Pond and Hayford Streets 
Williams, Gen. John, House 12/22/78
 62 High Street

[BAN-gor or BANG-gor] is the major city in, and county seat of, Penobscot County, incorporated as a town on February 24, 1834 from the former Kunduskee (or Kenduskeag) Plantation.  On March 26, 1853 the "Queen City" was incorporated as a city just at the beginning of its legendary history as a booming community when logging was king.

The area was first settled by Jacob Buswell and his family in 1769. Others came and went, but even by the beginning of the 19th century  Kenduskeag Plantation was a struggling frontier outpost.  One estimate has the population at about 150 in 1790.

During the War of 1812, the British forged up the Penobscot River, shelled the community, and ignited a disastrous fire virtually destroying it.

Life was breathed into the area when Maine separated from Massachusetts in 1820. At the time, the vast Maine timberlands were put on the block for private speculation. The wealth of the woods drew investors and fortune hunters.  

By the 1830s, Bangor, now a city, was building 500 structures annually. It boasted luxury residences, a grand hotel, a lovely downtown and hoped to surpass Boston in size and importance.

In 1834, the 264-acre Mount Hope Cemetery was established.  Now listed on the National Register of Historic Places,  it is the second oldest garden cemetery in America, designed to serve as a haven for the living as well as a final resting-place for the deceased.  (Another picture.)

However, the financial panic of 1837 brought much of the City's creativity and optimism to a halt.  Lumbering finally revived the economy and dominated it in the mid- to late 19th century. Foundries were built to provide stoves for the lumber camps, and the machinery to run huge sawmills; the shoe industry made boots; the tool and dye industry supplied the tools needed in the woods; the ships were built to haul lumber to distant ports. 

Until the 1870s, Bangor was the lumber capital of the world with a billion board feet of lumber shipped from its docks. By the 1880's, the lumber industry had declined significantly, as did the city's economy.

Other smaller industries soon emerged to fill the economic gap left by lumber - shoes, paper, fishing rods, tourism. Cheap hydroelectric power encouraged quantity and diversity. This industrial adaptation would come to a tragic halt on April 30, 1911, the day of the Great Fire. Fifty-five commercial and residential acres burned in one of Maine's worst fires.

The economic disaster of the Great Fire was real, but the city rebuilt quickly with the best materials available, in the most avant-garde styles, using architects from Boston and New York as well as Bangor. The Great Fire District is an architectural monument to the dynamic spirit and will to survive.

In the 20th century, with the coming of the automobile, Bangor emerged as the financial, retail and cultural center for northern and eastern Maine and the Maritimes.

The river, rail service, and the emerging Eastern Maine Medical Center contributed to its continued growth.

Dow Air Force Base provided an economic and civic boost during the Cold War until its decommissioning in 1968.  The City's creation of Bangor International Airport, capitalizing on its strategic position along the great circle route from Europe to key locations in the United States, turned the potential liability into an economic asset.

Strict historical ordinances, downtown restoration and revitalization,  and interest in Bangor's older residential neighborhoods has mark a change of attitude from the "new is always better" approach of Urban Renewal in the late 1960s.  During that period, the classic Union Station was razed, along with many other historic structures.  The landmark "Standpipe" at left, however, still towers over the city.  

 The downtown area remained a huge parking lot for nearly two decades with development hindered by the phenomenal expansion of a former dairy farm's fields into the huge and growing Bangor Mall complex.

Recent years have seen real renewal in the city's downtown with a children's museum, a local theater company, and recreational development of the Penobscot riverfront..

The Queen City's famous citizens include Hannibal Hamlin, Abraham Lincoln's first Vice-President; William S. Cohen, a U.S. Senator and Secretary of Defense; and a series of governors:

1821-1821           William D. Williamson
1838-39;41-42     Edward Kent
1881-1883           Harris M. Plaisted
1889-1893           Edwin C. Burleigh
1921-1921           Frederick H. Parkhurst
1959-1959           Robert N. Haskell
1987-1995           John R. McKernan, Jr.

 
The Bangor Auditorium, with its trademark Paul Bunyan presence, and nearby Bass Park raceway, attract major events to the city.

Additional resources

Chadbourne, Ava Harriet. Maine Place Names and The Peopling of its Towns
Scree, Trudy I. Mount Hope Cemetery: A Twentieth-Century History.