Communities
Penobscot Bay
Penobscot Bay shelters midcoast Maine, and its renowned waters are home to an extensive lobster habitat, storied cruising grounds for yachtsmen, and dramatic beauty from every vantage point.
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Our People
Some of our talented people working in this area.
Alexandria Brasili Herring Gut Learning Center AmeriCorps Fellow Louis W. Cabot Fellowship Award Recipient | |
Benjamin Odgren Island Fellow Island Scholars Network Coordinator | |
Birgitta Polson Community Energy AmeriCorps Fellow |
During the 19th and early 20th century, many of the bay’s islands were important sources for granite, and the islands' quarries provided materials for monuments and important buildings throughout the country. Abandoned artifacts of these activities remain on many of the bay’s islands, and the rise and fall of the granite industry changed the region significantly: island communities that once attracted skilled labor from Europe and all over the United States disappeared virtually overnight.
Fishing and tourism now largely sustain the remaining year-round island communities, but the memory of so many islands’ rapid decline and abandonment reminds us of this region’s fragility.
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