City of Bath

City of Bath. The River is a Road, a road of opportunity.. Echoing with the clamor of hammers and saws building ships and homes; Bath was booming by 1850s, as was the expanding American nation. 100 years before, the community of just forty families, known as "Long Reach," separated from Georgetown as its second parish in 1753, but then ballooned to an incorporated city with about 12,000 residents by 1854. The resulting development hugged the shore as almost three-dozen wharves stretched into the Kennebec, providing multiple locations for the docking of vessels. Homes, both elaborate and modest, were often constructed so face the river, as eyes often turned to observe the many shipyards assembling various boats and to watch the comings and goings of the numerous ships that brought travelers, necessities, and luxuries., Caption of the top photo on the marker reads: , Cyrus King (1816-1881), the only son of Governor William King, drew the busy Kennebec River and Bath about 1844. His detailed work was translated to this lithograph, a rare image of Bath as the community began a transformative period of expansion. Courtesy of Patten Free Library., Caption of the left side marker photo reads: , The bird's-eye map was a very popular view of American cities in the nineteenth century. This detail, from the 1878 map of Bath, published by J. J. Stoner in Wisconsin, showed a community bustling with activity, a stream ferry crossing the river rom Woolwich, and some of the many wharves. Courtesy of Sagadahoc History and Genealogy Room, Patten Free Library., Caption of the right side marker photo reads: , Broad Street ran down from Bath's main commercial thoroughfare, Front Street, to the City Landing on the Kennebec River. This image from about 1880 captured the entwined nature of city and river, where vessels were build for varied trade throughout the world and, in turn, brought the goods of the world to Bath. Courtesy of Richard S. Hill., Caption of the bottom photo of marker reads: , You would be treading water, if you were in this very location before Bath's building boom of the mid-nineteenth century constructed the many wharves that stretched into the Kennebec and then created additional land in the downtown by filling the spaces between those wooden structures. The comparison between Bath's shoreline, as trace from Abraham Hammatt's map of Bath around 1830 and the modern shoreline today, shows how much land was made by human activity. Information from Hammatt map, courtesy of Maine Maritime Museum. Information from modern shoreline, courtesy of the City of Bath.