Peculiarities of American Cities

by Willard W. Glazier

After a period of sixty years of steady growth, the town had extended only as far westward as Centre street, and the upper portion of the Neck was still covered with woods. The Indians gave the town little trouble after 1725, having made peace in that year, and gradually dwindled away, and emigrated to Canada. In 1755 it was no longer a frontier post. Its population had increased to nearly 3,000 inhabitants, commerce had been established, and the town was a most peaceful and a prosperous one. At the commencement of the Revolution 2,555 tons of shipping were owned in Falmouth.

When the colonies began to resist the encroachments of England, Falmouth took a prominent and patriotic stand. In October, 1775, Captain Henry Mowatt, with a fleet of five vessels, opened his batteries on the town, and, firing the houses, laid it in ashes. Over four hundred buildings were destroyed, leaving only one hundred standing. The place was again deserted, the people seeking safety in the interior.

On January first, the Falmouth Gazette and Weekly Advertiser, the first newspaper of the town, was published by Benjamin Titcomb and Thomas B. Waite. In 1786 the town was divided, the Neck receiving the name of Portland, having at that time a population of about two thousand. In 1793 wharves were extended into the harbor. In 1806, its commercial business and general prosperity were unexampled in New England. The duties collected at the Custom House reached, in that year, $342,809, having increased from $8,109 in 1790. But in 1807, the embargo which followed the non-intercourse policy of 1806 resulted in the suspension of commerce and the temporary ruin of the shipping interests. Commercial houses were prostrated, and great distress prevailed. The harbor was empty, and grass grew upon the wharves. In the war of 1812 privateers were fitted out here, some of which damaged the enemy, while others were captured. After the peace of 1815 commerce revived but slowly, and the population as slowly increased.

In March, 1820, Maine was separated from Massachusetts, and admitted into the Union as a State; and Portland became its capital. In 1832 the capital was removed to Augusta. In 1828 the first steamboat anchored in the harbor of Portland, having arrived from New York to run as a passenger boat between Portland and Boston. The Portland Steam Packet Company was organized in 1844, and has continued in successful operation ever since.

Portland has one of the deepest and best harbors in the world, with a depth of forty feet at low tide. Its surroundings are exceptionally favorable for a commercial city, and were it not for its geographical location, it being so far north of the great areas of population, it would undoubtedly have gained a prominence over most of the Atlantic cities. But Boston and New York drew all but the provincial trade and commerce, and with a sparsely settled country at its back, there was little to build up Portland and give it great prosperity. In 1850 the Cumberland and Oxford Canal, connecting the waters of Sebago Lake with Portland Harbor, was completed. This was not a great enterprise, certainly, as compared with modern undertakings; but the Portlanders thought a good deal of it at the time. Between 1840 and 1846, the city endured another season of depression. Railroads had given to Boston much of the business that had formerly found a natural outlet through Portland; but in the latter year a railroad was planned to Canada, which, when completed, in 1853, brought it into connection with the cities of the British provinces, and with the vast grain-growing regions of the west. A winter line of steamers to Liverpool followed, and the rapidly increasing commerce of the city soon resulted in the construction of a wide business avenue, extending a mile in length, along the whole water front of the city. This new street was called Commercial, and became the locality of heavy wholesale trade. Closely following, came the opening up of railroads to all sections of the State, and the establishment of steamboat lines along the coast, as far as the Lower Provinces. Trade that had hitherto gone to Boston was thus reclaimed, new manufacturing establishments sprung up, and an era of prosperity seemed fairly inaugurated.

Portland manifested her patriotism during the war of the Rebellion, contributing 5,000 men to the army, of whom four hundred and twenty-one returned. In June, 1863, the United States Revenue cutter, Caleb Cushing, having been captured by Rebels, and pursued by the officials of the city, and becoming becalmed near the Green Islands, was blown up by her captors, the latter taking to the boats, only to be captured and sent to Fort Preble as prisoners of war.

On the fourth of July, 1866, a fire-cracker, carelessly thrown in a boat builder's shop, on Commercial, near the foot of High street, resulted in a fire which laid in ruins more than half the city of Portland. The fire commenced about five o'clock in the afternoon. The sparks soon communicated with Brown's Sugar House, and thence, spreading out like a fan, swept diagonally across the city, destroying everything in its track, until a space one and one-half miles long, by one and one-fourth miles broad, was so completely devastated that only a forest of tottering walls and blackened chimneys remained, and it was difficult to trace even the streets. The fire was fanned into such a fury by a gale which was blowing at the time, that the efforts of the firemen were without avail, and the work of destruction was only stayed when, as a last resort, buildings in its path were blown up before the flames had reached them. The entire business portion, embracing one-half the city, was destroyed. Every bank and newspaper office, every lawyer's office, many stores, churches, public buildings and private residences were swept away. Fireproof structures, which were hastily filled with valuables, in the belief that they would withstand the flames, crumbled to the earth, as though melted by the intense heat. Only one building on Middle street stood unscathed, though the flames swept around it in a fiery sea. The fire did not burn itself out until early in the morning of the following day, when it paused at the foot of Mountjoy Hill. When morning came, the inhabitants looked with terror and dismay upon fifteen hundred buildings in ashes, fifty-eight streets and courts desolated, ten thousand people homeless, and $10,000,000 worth of property destroyed.

The work of succor and reconstruction immediately began. The churches were thrown open to shelter the homeless; Mountjoy Hill was speedily transformed into a village of tents; barracks were built; contributions of food, clothing and money poured in from near and far; the old streets were widened and straightened, and new ones opened; and before the year had closed many substantial buildings and blocks had been completed, and others were in process of erection. The new Portland has arisen from the ruins of the old, more stately, more beautiful and more substantial than before; and after the lapse of so many years, the evil which the fire wrought is forgotten, and only the good is manifest. Railroads have since been built, and travel and commerce is each year increasing. The population of Portland in 1880 was 33,810.

The approach to Portland is more beautiful, even, than that to New York. The city is built upon a small peninsula rising out of Casco Bay, to a mean central elevation of more than one hundred feet. This peninsula projects from the main land in a northeast direction, and is about three miles long, by an average breadth of three-fourths of a mile. An arm of the Bay, called Fore River, divides it on the south from Cape Elizabeth, and forms an inner harbor of more than six hundred acres in extent, and with an average depth, at high water, of thirty feet. Vessels of the largest size can anchor in the main harbor, in forty feet of water at low tide. The waters of the Back Cove separate it on the north from the shores of Deering, and form another inner basin, of large extent and considerable depth.

At the northeasternmost extremity of the Neck, Munjoy Hill rises to a height of one hundred and sixty-one feet, and commands a beautiful view of the city, bay, adjacent islands and the ocean beyond. At the southwestern extremity is Bramhall's Hill, rising to one hundred and seventy-five feet and commanding city, bay, forests, fields, villages and mountains. The land sinks somewhat between these two elevations, but its lowest point still rises fifty-seven feet above high tide. The elevation of its site, and the beauty of its scenery and surroundings, are fast attracting the attention of tourists, and drawing to the city hosts of summer visitors.