New History of Camden Published This Summer: “Where The Mountains Meet The Sea”

Where the Mountains Meet the Sea is a new history of the Camden area. The book is intended to fill the century-long gap since the previous generation of local history books. This new book covers the years 1900 to 2000 and is filled with 296 pages of first-person stories, newspaper excerpts, images, and history to tell the story of this community and the events that have shaped its identity over the past 100 years.

The book is being published by the Camden Public Library's Edward J. Walsh History Center and is authored by Philip Conkling. The project to publish this book began in 2004, and the Camden Area History Center (now the Camden Public Library's Edward J. Walsh History Center) was created to begin the process of collecting photographs and archives to be used in the book. Through the history center, local historians, writers, long-time residents and newcomers were gathered together to share their stories, images, and other information about the past century in Camden and the neighboring towns of Lincolnville and Rockport to help immortalize the events of the 20th century in writing. This book is a result of those efforts.

Maine State Historian Earle G. Shettleworth Jr. says, "A book such as this not only preserves the history of past generations, but animates it for the present and the future. Above all, this volume captures the spirit of the time and place it represents, making it completely understandable why Edward Bok would write of the Camden area and of his summer home on Beauchamp Point in particular, ‘I come here to find myself. It is so easy to get lost in the world.'"

The book will be filled with images and sidebars collected from well-known local characters and historians such as Barbara Dyer. The stories range from the debates over whether to adopt Daylight Saving Time, to the rise and fall of Camden's historic Bean shipyard; the Knox Mill's transformation from a textile company to a credit card call center; accounts of area's movie stars, writers and artists; the impact of the summer community; and the role played by philanthropists. Philip Conkling is also the author of Islands in Time, A Natural and Cultural History of the Islands of the Gulf of Maine (1999) and Lobsters Great and Small (2001).

Click here to order the book.