Gateway to Vacationland The Making of Portland, Maine Traces the
history of a bustling New England seaport from its colonial
beginnings to the present Situated on a peninsula jutting into
picturesque Casco Bay, Portland has long been admired for its
geographical setting—the “beautiful city by the sea,” as native
son Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called it. At the same time,
Portland’s deep, ice-free port has made it an ideal site for the
development of coastal commerce and industry. Much of the city’s
history, John F. Bauman shows, has been defined by the effort to
reconcile the competing interests generated by these
attributes—to balance the imperatives of economic growth with a
desire to preserve Portland’s natural beauty. Caught in the
crossfire of British and French imperial ambitions throughout
the colonial era, Portland emerged as a prosperous shipbuilding
center and locus of trade in the decades following the American
Revolution. During the nineteenth century it became a busy
railroad hub and winter port