Bangor, Maine Bangor, Maine Official seal of Bangor, Maine Bangor (/ b e r/ bang-gor) is a town/city along the Penobscot River in the U.S.
The town/city proper has a populace of 33,039, while the Bangor urbane region has a populace of 153,746.
Bangor is known as the "Queen City" of Maine.
Modern Bangor was established by European Americans in the mid-1800s, based on the lumber and ship assembly industries.
As the town/city was positioned on the Penobscot River, logs could be floated downstream from the North Maine Woods and processed at the city's water-powered sawmills, then shipped from Bangor's port to the Atlantic Ocean 30 miles downstream, and from there to any port in the world.
Today, Bangor's economy is based on services and retail, healthcare, and education.
Founded as Condeskeag Plantation, Bangor was incorporated as a New England town in 1791, after the end of the American Revolutionary War.
There are more than 20 communities around the world named Bangor, of which 15 are in the United States and titled after Bangor, Maine by pioneer in other areas.
The reason for the choice of name is disputed but it was likely either from the eponymous Welsh hymn or from either of two places of that name in the British Isles: Bangor, Gwynedd, Wales, and Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland, from where many immigrants traveled to the United States. The final syllable is pronounced gor, not ger.
Bangor has a port of entry at Bangor International Airport, also home to the Bangor Air National Guard Base.
Historically Bangor was an meaningful stopover on the great circle air route between the East Coast of the United States and Europe.
Bangor's Police Department also has a prominent Facebook page, which uses humor and advice in an attempt to better enhance police relations, which has made nationwide news on multiple occasions.
The Penobscot have inhabited the region around present-day Bangor for at least 11,000 years and still occupy tribal territory on the close-by Penobscot Indian Island Reservation.
In 1779, the rebel Penobscot Expedition fled up the Penobscot River and ten of its ships were scuttled by the British fleet at Bangor.
During the War of 1812, Bangor and Hampden were looted by the British.
Bangor was near the lands disputed amid the Aroostook War, a boundary dispute with Britain in 1838 39.
Bangor arose as a lumbering boom-town in the 1830s, and a potential demographic and political rival to Portland, Maine.
For a time, Bangor was the biggest lumber port in the world, and the site of furious territory speculation that extended up the Penobscot River valley and beyond. In 1861, after the outbreak of the American Civil War, a Unionist mob attacked and ransacked the offices of the Democratic journal the Bangor Daily Union.
During the American Civil War, the locally mustered 2nd Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment was the first to march out of Maine in 1861.
The 1st Maine Heavy Artillery Regiment, mustered in Bangor and commanded by a small-town merchant, lost more men than any other Union regiment in the war (especially in the Second Battle of Petersburg, 1864).
A bridge connecting Bangor with Brewer is titled for Chamberlain, the regiment's leader, who was one of eight Civil War soldiers from Penobscot County suburbs to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor. Bangor's Charles A.
A Bangor residentiary street is titled for him.
A number of Bangor ships were captured on the high seas by Confederate raiders in the Civil War, including the Delphine, James Littlefield, Mary E.
The Penobscot River Maine North Woods drainage watershed above Bangor was unattractive to settlement for farming, but well suited to lumbering.
Carried to the Penobscot or its tributaries, log driving in the snowmelt brought them to waterfall-powered sawmills upriver from Bangor.
The sawn lumber was then shipped from the city's docks, Bangor being at the head-of-tide (between the rapids and the ocean) to points anywhere in the world.
The chief markets for Bangor lumber were the East Coast cities.
Bangor, Washington; Bangor, California; and Little Bangor, Nevada, are legacies of this contact. By 1860, Bangor was the world's biggest lumber port, with 150 sawmills operating along the river.
Bangor has many substantial old churches, and shade trees.
In addition to shipping lumber, 19th-century Bangor was the dominant producer of moccasins, shipping over 100,000 pairs a year by the 1880s. Exports also encompassed bricks, leather, and even ice (which was cut and stored in winter, then shipped to Boston, and even China, the West Indies and South America). Bangor had certain disadvantages compared to other East Coast ports, including its rival Portland, Maine.
Was titled The Bangor.
Bangor continued to prosper as the pulp and paper trade replaced lumbering, and barns s replaced shipping. Local capitalists also invested in a train route to Aroostook County in northern Maine (the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad), opening that region to settlement.
Bangor's Hinkley & Egery Ironworks (later Union Ironworks) was a small-town center for invention in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Bangor is positioned at 44 48 13 N 68 46 13 W (44.803, 68.770). According to the United States Enumeration Bureau, the town/city has a total region of 34.59 square miles (89.59 km2), of which 34.26 square miles (88.73 km2) is territory and 0.33 square miles (0.85 km2) is water. As early as the 1870s, the town/city promoted a Halifax-to-New York barns , via Bangor, as the fastest connection between North America and Europe (when combined with steamship service between Britain and Halifax).
A European and North American Railway was actually opened through Bangor, with President Ulysses S.
When the damage was tallied, Bangor had lost its high school, postal service & custom home, enhance library, telephone and telegraph companies, banks, two fire stations, nearly a hundred businesses, six churches, and Jewish house of worship and 285 private residences over a total of 55 acres.
1914: The Bangor Opera House burned down, and two firemen were killed by a collapsing wall.
It ushered in a diminish of the town/city center that was accelerated by the assembly of the Bangor Mall in 1978 and subsequent big-box stores on the city's outskirts. Downtown Bangor began to recover in the 1990s, with bookstores, cafe/restaurants, arcades, and exhibitions filling once-vacant storefronts.
Bangor is on the banks of the Penobscot River, close enough to the Atlantic Ocean to be influenced by tides.
In 1807 an ice jam formed below Bangor Village raising the water 10 to 12 feet above the normal highwater mark and in 1887 the freshet caused the Maine Central Railroad Company rails between Bangor and Vanceboro to be veiled to a depth of a several feet. Bangor's worst ice jam floods occurred in 1846 and 1902.
In March of both years, a dynamic breakup of ice ran into the jam and flooded downtown Bangor.
The United States Coast Guard began icebreaker operations on the Penobscot in the 1940s, preventing the formation of frozen ice jams amid the winter and providing an unobstructed path for ice-out in the spring. Long-term temperature records show a gradual warming since 1894, which may have reduced the ice jam flood potential at Bangor.
In the Groundhog Day gale of 1976 a storm surge went up the Penobscot, flooding Bangor for three hours. At 11:15 am, waters began rising on the river and inside 15 minutes had risen a total of 3.7 metres (12 ft) flooding downtown.
Bangor has a humid continental climate (Koppen Dfb), with cold, snowy winters, and warm summers, and is positioned in USDA hardiness zone 5a. The monthly daily average temperature ranges from 17.0 F ( 8.3 C) in January to 68.5 F (20.3 C) in July. On average, there are 21 evenings annually that drop to 0 F ( 18 C) or below, and 57 days where the temperature stays below freezing, including 49 days from December through February. There is an average of 5.3 days annually with highs at or above 90 F (32 C), with the last year to have not seen such temperatures being 2014. Extreme temperatures range from 32 F ( 36 C) on February 10, 1948 up to 104 F (40 C) on August 19, 1935. at least 0.1 in (0.25 cm), are November 23 and April 4. The average cyclic snow flurry for Bangor is approximately 66 inches (170 cm), while snow flurry has ranged from 22.2 inches (56 cm) in 1979 80 to 181.9 inches (4.62 m) in 1962 63; the record snowiest month was February 1969 with 58.0 inches (147 cm), while the most snow in one calendar day was 30.0 inches (76 cm) on December 14, 1927. Measurable snow occurs in May occurs about one-fourth of all years, while it has occurred just once (1991) in September. A snow depth of at least 3 in (7.6 cm) is on average seen 66 days per winter, including 54 days from January to March, when the snow pack is typically most reliable.
Climate data for Bangor International Airport, Maine (1981 2010 normals, extremes 1925 2015) As of 2008, Bangor is the third most crowded city in Maine, as it has been for more than a century.
As of 2012, the estimated populace of the Bangor Metropolitan Area (which includes Penobscot County) is 153,746, indicating a slight expansion rate since 2000, almost all of it accounted for by Bangor. As of 2007, Metro Bangor had a higher percentage of citizens with high school degrees than the nationwide average (85% compared to 76.5%) and a slightly higher number of graduate degree holders (7.55% compared to 7.16%).
Historically Bangor received many immigrants as it industrialized.
Services and retail: Hannaford Supermarkets, Bangor Savings Bank, Nexx - Linx call center, Walmart.
Finance: The Bangor Savings Bank, established in 1852, is Maine's biggest autonomous bank; as of 2013, it had more than $2.8 billion in assets and the biggest share of the 13-bank Bangor market. Bangor is the biggest market town, distribution center, transit hub, and media center in a five-county region whose populace tops 330,000 and which includes Penobscot, Piscataquis, Hancock, Aroostook, and Washington counties.
Bangor's City Council has allowed a resolution opposing the sale of sweat-shop-produced clothing in small-town stores. Outdoor activities in the Bangor City Forest and other close-by parks, forests, and waterways include hiking, sailing, canoeing, hunting, fishing, skiing, and snowmobiling.
Bangor Raceway at the Bass Park Civic Center and Auditorium offers live, pari-mutuel harness racing from May through July and then briefly in the fall.
In 2007, assembly began on a $131-million casino complex in Bangor that homes, among other things, a gambling floor with about 1,000 slot machines, an off-track betting center, a seven-story hotel, and a four-level parking garage.
Bangor Air National Guard Base is a United States Air National Guard base.
In 1968, the base was sold to the town/city of Bangor, Maine, to turn into Bangor International Airport but has since continued to host the 101st Air Refueling Wing, Maine Air National Guard, part of the Northeast Tanker Task Force.
In 1990, the USAF East Coast Radar System (ECRS) Operation Center was activated in Bangor with over 400 personnel.
The center controlled the over-the-horizon radar's transmitter in Moscow, Maine, and receiver in Columbia Falls, Maine.
One of the country's earliest fairs, the Bangor State Fair has occurred annually for more than 150 years.
The Cross Insurance Center (which replaced the Bangor Auditorium in 2013) Bangor Public Library chief entrance The University of Maine Museum of Art and the Maine Discovery Museum, a primary children's exhibition was established in 2001 in the former Freese's Department Store.
The Bangor Historical Society, in addition to its space exhibit, maintains the historic Thomas A.
The town/city has also had a municipal Historic Preservation Commission since the early 1980s. Bangor contains many Greek Revival.
The Bangor House Hotel, now converted to apartements, is the only survivor among a series of "Palace Hotels" designed by Boston architect Isaiah Rogers, which were the first of their kind in the United States. Richard Upjohn, British-born architect and early promoter of the Gothic Revival style, received some of his first commissions in Bangor, including the Isaac Farrar House (1833), Samuel Farrar House (1836), Thomas A.
Hill House (presently owned by the Bangor Historical Society), and St.
Bangor Public Library by Peabody and Stearns.
(The Bangor Public Library instead of a a several year long renovation process in late 2016, with a enhance unveiling of a more conventional look to appeal to a undivided generation).
The Little City Park Storage Box is one of the most meaningful and jubilated landmarks in not only Bangor, but Maine history as a whole.
There are three large bronze statues in downtown Bangor by sculptor Charles Eugene Tefft of Brewer, including the Luther H.
The abstract aluminum sculpture "Continuity of Community" (1969) on the Bangor Waterfront, formerly in West Market Square, is by the Castine sculptor Clark Battle Fitz-Gerald.
Bangor was home to two minor league baseball squads affiliated with the 1995-98 Northeast League: the Bangor Blue Ox (1996 97) and the Bangor Lumberjacks (2003 04).
Even earlier the Bangor Millionaires (1894 96) played in the New England League.
Bangor is the governmental center of county of Penobscot County.
Bangor City Hall In 2007, Bangor was the first town/city in the U.S.
In 2012, Bangor's City Council passed an order in support of same-sex marriage in Maine.
In 2013, the City of Bangor also signed an amicus brief to the United States Supreme Court calling for the federal Defense of Marriage Act to be hit down. In 2008 Bangor's crime rate was the second-lowest among American urbane areas of comparable size. As of 2014 Bangor had the third highest rate of property crime in Maine. Realizing the need for a law enforcement, the town incorporated as The City of Bangor in 1834. In the 1800s, sailors and loggers gave the town/city a reputation for roughness; their stomping grounds were known as the "Devil's Half Acre". The same name was also applied, at roughly the same time, to The Devil's Half-Acre, Pennsylvania.
The first to prohibit the sale of alcohol, with the passage of the "Maine law" in 1851), Bangor managed to remain "wet".
A look-the-other-way attitude by small-town police and politicians (sustained by a fitness of bribery in the form of ritualized fine-payments known as "The Bangor Plan") allowed Bangor to flout the nation's most long-standing state prohibition law. In 1913, the war of the "drys" (prohibitionists) on "wet" Bangor escalated when the Penobscot County Sheriff was impeached and removed by the Maine Legislature for not enforcing anti-liquor laws.
Prohibitionist Carrie Nation had been forcibly expelled from the Bangor House hotel in 1902 after causing a disturbance. FBI agents ambushed Brady, Shaffer, and James Dalhover on Bangor's Central Street after they had attempted to purchase a Thompson submachinegun from Dakin's Sporting Goods downtown. Brady is buried in the enhance section of Mount Hope Cemetery, on the north side of Mount Hope Avenue. Until recently, Brady's grave was unmarked.
The University of Maine (originally The Maine State College) was established in Orono in 1868.
A vocationally-oriented University College of Bangor, associated with the University of Maine at Augusta.
Eastern Maine Community College established in 1966 by the Maine State Legislature, under the authority of the State Board of Education, EMCC was originally known as Eastern Maine Vocational Technical Institute (EMVTI).
In 1986 the 112th Legislature created a quasi-independent fitness with a board of trustees to govern all six of Maine's VTIs, and in 1989 another law changed the names of these establishments to more accurately reflect their purpose and activities; EMVTI thus became Eastern Maine Technical College (EMTC).
The Bangor Theological Seminary, established in 1814, was the only accredited graduate school of religion in northern New England.
The enhance Bangor High School.
The Bangor Daily News was established in the late 1800s, and is one of the several remaining family-owned newspapers left in the United States.
The Maine Edge is presented from Bangor.
Bangor has more than a dozen airways broadcasts and seven TV stations, including WLBZ, WABI-TV, WABI-DT2), WVII, WBGR-LD, and WFVX-LD.
WHSN is a non-commercial alternative modern station licensed to Bangor and run and directed by staff and students at the New England School of Communications at Husson University.
Daily intercity bus service from Bangor proper is provided by two companies.
Concord Coach Lines joins Bangor with Augusta, Portland, a several towns in Maine's midcoast region, and Boston, Massachusetts.
West's Bus Service provides service between Bangor and Calais. The Community Connector fitness offers enhance transit inside Bangor and to adjoining suburbs such as Orono.
1869: The Black Island Railroad Bridge north of Old Town, Maine collapsed under the weight of a Bangor and Piscataquis Railroad train, killing 3 crew and injuring 7 8 others. 1871: A bridge in Hampden collapsed under the weight of a Maine Central Railroad train approaching Bangor, killing 2 and injuring 50. 1911: A head-on collision of two trains north of Bangor, in Grindstone, killed 15, including 5 members of the Presque Isle Brass Band. Bangor International Airport (IATA: BGR, ICAO: KBGR) is a joint civil-military enhance airport on the west side of the city.
Bangor is the last (or first) American airport along the great circle route between the U.S.
Bangor is home to two large hospitals, the Eastern Maine Medical Center and the Catholic-affiliated St.
As of 2012, the Bangor Metropolitan Travel Destination (Penobscot County) ranked in the top fifth for physicians per capita nationally (74th of 381).
John, New Brunswick (part of the Second cholera pandemic) sent as many as eight hundred poor Irish immigrants walking to Bangor.
Main article: List of citizens from Bangor, Maine "City of Bangor, ME: Charter".
(Bangor, Me.)".
"Greater Bangor CVB".
"But for a favorite hymn, Bangor might have been Sunbury".
Bangor Daily News.
"Bangor, Wales agrees with "We Are Bangor" video it's -GOR, not -GER".
Bangor Daily News.
Seth Noble : a Revolutionary War soldier's promise of America : and, the beginning of Bangor, Maine and Columbus, Ohio.
Smith, A History of Lumbering in Maine, 1861 1960 (University of Maine Press, 1972) a b The Press of Penobscot Co., Maine, John E, Godfrey, Retrieved 29 December 2007 Medal of Honor Recipients Associated with the State of Maine.
According to this list, 4 Civil War MOH recipients were born in Bangor, and one each in Brewer (Chamberlain), Old Town, Edinburg, and La - Grange a b Richard George Wood, A History of Lumbering in Maine, 1820 61 (Orono: University of Maine Press, 1971) "Maine's Queen City Since 1834".
Edward Mitchell Blanding, "Bangor, Maine", New England Magazine, v.
David Clayton Smith, A History of Lumbering in Maine, 1861 1960 (Orono: University of Maine Press, 1972) Annual Report of the American Institute of the City of New York (1856), p.
New York Times, "The Bangor Fires", July 1, 1856, p.
The Bangor Fire New York Times, Oct.
Bangor in Focus: Urban Renewal Retrieved June 29, 2008 City of Bangor.
"Maine River Basin Report" (PDF).
"The Great Bangor Storm Surge Flash Flood".
Sperling's Best Places: Bangor Maine, retrieved January 17, 2008 Maureen Elgersman Lee, Black Bangor: African-Americans in a Maine Community, 1880 1950 (University Press of New England, 2005) The Bangor Daily News.
Bangor Daily News.
"Bangor Historical Society".
Deborah Thompson, Bangor, Maine, 1769 1914: An Architectural History (Orono: University of Maine Press, 1988) Bangor In Focus: The Bangor House Retrieved June 29, 2008 Bangor In Focus: Bangor Mental Health Institute Retrieved June 28, 2008 Bangor Maine: the Official Web Site of the City of Bangor, retrieved 18 Jan., 2008 Bangor Daily News, Friday, September 07, 2007 "Search Maine High Schools - US News".
The Bangor Daily News.
"Maine to Canada bus service to end".
Williams, Chase, and Co., History of Penobscot County, Maine (1882), p.
Media related to Bangor, Maine at Wikimedia Commons Bangor, Maine travel guide from Wikivoyage Broadcast tv in Central and Eastern Maine including Bangor and Calais Municipalities and communities of Penobscot County, Maine, United States
Categories:
Bangor, Maine - Cities in Maine - Cities in Penobscot County, Maine - County seats in Maine - Logging communities in the United States - Populated places established in 1791 - Port metros/cities and suburbs of the United States Atlantic coast
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