A Glimpse into Falmouth, MaineBy Peter Bouchard

Native Americans followed receding glaciers into Maine around 11,000 BCE. At the time of European contact in the sixteenth century, Algonquian speaking people inhabited present-day Falmouth. When French explorer Samuel de Champlain made European contact in the area in 1605, he identified these people as the "Almouchiquois," a polity stretching from the Androscoggin River to Cape Ann and culturally distinct from their Wampanoag and Abenaki neighbors.

Within the Almouchiquois, a semi-autonomous band Captain John Smith called the Aucocisco inhabited Casco Bay. English explorer Christopher Levett observed in 1623 that the Aucocisco Sagamore Skittery Gusset lived at the Presumpscot Falls. protection of New France or further up the coast where the

Warfare with neighboring Native American nations over access to European trade and epidemics, especially between 1614 and 1620, drastically reduced the population of native peoples in Southern Maine. Still, Indians maintained a presence in the Casco Bay area until King George's War in the 1740s. French military defeat and increasing English settler migration to the area from primarily southern New England impelled most Native Americans to migrate toward the

Ancient Falmouth encompassed the present day cities of Portland, South Portland, Westbrook and Cape Elizabeth. Todays town was known as New Casco, and was only a neighborhood within the larger collection of communities around Casco Bay known as Falmouth. Falmouths early years were marked by extreme violence as it lay on a borderland zone between Europeans and Native Americans.

In 1765, Cape Elizabeth (then including South Portland) was set off. In 1786, Portland broke away, followed in 1814 by Westbrook, although boundaries between it and Falmouth were readjusted throughout the 19th-century. T

The extension of trolley service from Portland to the Falmouth Foreside in 1898 catapulted the town into the modern era. Trolleys cemented Falmouths economic connection to Portland and transformed the Foreside neighborhood into a relaxation spot for nearby city dwellers. P

In 1943, Percival Proctor Baxter donated Mackworth Island to the state as a wildlife refuge; today it is site of the state school for the deaf and hard of hearing.[

Following World War II, Falmouth began transforming from a rural agricultural community into primarily a residential suburb of Portland. Military personnel who moved to the town while Casco Bay was base Sail for Americas destroyer fleet from 1941 to 1944 kick started this growth.

almouths location on the ocean, along with its respected public school system, has made it one of the more attractive communities in Greater Portland. This demand consequently led developers to construct two additional country clubs in 1986 and 1988. The nature of such enclosed neighborhoods and other high-scale subdivisions like it has only recently turned the town into one of the most affluent in Maine.

Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.- Charles Dickens