Beyond Popham
After four centuries, Phippsburg -- home to the first English settlement in New England -- is finally being pulled into the present.
By Colin Woodard, Photography by Michele Stapleton
Phippsburg is one of those peninsular towns that characterize so much of Maine's coast, communities whose history goes back so far it predates even their own isolation. In the age of sail, Maine's offshore islands and peninsular headlands were the most accessible places in New England. Close to both fishing grounds and the transatlantic shipping lanes, Phippsburg and Georgetown, Pemaquid and the Boothbays were among the first places the English put down roots. Seclusion didn't come to the peninsulas until the late nineteenth century, when the nation's commerce shifted to rail and road farther inland.
