Gazetteer of the State of Maine With Numerous Illustrations, by Geo. J. Varney

BOSTON: PUBLISHED BY B. B. RUSSELL, 57 CORNHILL. 1882. Public domain image from

492    GAzETEEER    OF    MAINE.

drive-way hundreds of feet wide, with the deep blue ocean booming on
one side and lines of imposing hotels, and pretty cottages on the
other. Near the hotels is a beautiful forest-park of 80 acres, with
pleasant paths, arbors and rustic adornments. About two miles distant,
on Foxwell’s Brook, is a picturesque waterfall, 60 feet in height.

The face of the country is little varied by hills, and is somewhat
swampy in the middle of the town, shoreward of which is quite an ex-
tent of pine plain. In this vicinity the soil is a fine sandy loam ; in the
interior the surface is more uneven and the soil more gravelly, and the
hard woods flourish.

Saco has churches of the Congregationalists, Baptists, Episcopals,
Unitarians, and Christians, two of the Free Baptists, and two of
the Methodists ; some of the edifices being quite elegant. The schools
in the village are graded, from primary to high. The entire number
of schoolhouses in the city is sixteen ; and the school property is valued
at $18,125. The valuation of estates in 1870 was $3,116,374. In 1880
it was $3,408,533. The population at the same date was 5,755. In
1880 it was 6,395. See Biddeford.

Saddleback Mountain, See article on Dallas Plan-
tation.

Sagadahoc County is situated upon the lower portions
of the Kennebec and Androscoggin Rivers. Within it are contained
Merrymeeting Bay, where the two rivers join; Sagadahoc River,,
which they form; and Sasanoa, an arm of the Sagadahoc. Gener-
ally, however, the name Kennebec is applied to this stream quite to
the sea, thus making the Androscoggin its tributary. This county
contains ten towns and one city, as follows: city of Bath, towns of
Arrowsic, Bowdoin, Bowdoinham, Georgetown, Perkins, Phipsburg,
Richmond, Topsham, West Bath and Woolwich. The length of the
county north and south is 33 miles, and its breadth, from 6 to 17
miles. It has an area of about 300 square miles, including water sur-
face, which is about 45 square miles. The county is chiefly remark-
able topographically for the number of its streams, hays and coves, and
its numerous tide-powers. The surface of the county, though consider-
ably broken, has no high hills, and the general altitude is such that the
fresh-water streams and salt inlets are not productive of deep ravines.
In the south-eastern portion of the county especially, the bed rock is
imperfectly covered with soil, and consequently, it shows many ledges.
Three of its towns, Arrowsic, Perkins and Georgetown, are islands, and
three, Phipsburg, Bath and West Bath are nearly so. The business is
agriculture, ice-storage, lumber manufacture, ship-building, navigation,
commerce and the fisheries. Steamboat communication with Portland
and Boston is had through the whole length of the county, while
during the hot months steamers run across the country from the Ken-
nebec towns to Boothbay beyond the Sheepscot River. The Maine
Central Railroad traverses the western part north and south along the
course of the Kennebec, and connects with the Knox and Lincoln Rail-
road, which connects Bath with Rockland on the Penobscot.

Sagadahoc County was formerly included in Yorkshire, and later,
in Lincoln County; having been set off from the latter and incorpo-
rated in 1854. The exploring company of DeMonts, led by the intre-