A Trip to Harrington, ME

The view from the campground.

Today we drove to Harrington, ME to see a campground called Sunset Point Campground (about an hour’s drive northeast of Bar Harbor.  We made the trip starting out early in the morning and found the day to be overcast initially but without rain and clearing as we went east.  Harrington is an old seafaring and shipbuilding town with a current population of about 1,000 people.

Harrington was first established as a settlement in 1765 and is at the head of Narraguagus Bay.  Initially farmers grew wheat and potatoes in the town’s sandy soil, but eventually the town developed a lumber industry with two sawmills, three shingle mills and two lath mills by 1859.  There were also eighteen shipbuilders, two brickyards and a gristmill by this point.  A tannery was making boots and shoes here by 1886.

The nearby Narraguagus Bay with islands in the mist beyond.