Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)/Portland (Maine)

PORTLAND, a city, port of entry, and county-seat of Cumberland co., Me.; on Casco Bay, and on the Boston and Maine, the Grand Trunk, the Portland and Rochester, the Maine Central, and other railroads; 105 miles N. E. of Boston. It has direct steamboat connections with Boston and New York, and two weekly steamship lines to Europe. The city is delightfully laid out along a peninsula, in the harbor, protected by a massive breakwater. Here are a custom house, City Hall, which contains a Municipal Organ, postoffice. United States Marine Hospital, the Maine General Hospital, headquarters of the Maine Historical Society, Portland Society of Natural History, the Wadsworth mansion, the Longfellow homestead, etc. The city has waterworks, several libraries, electric light and street railroad plants. National, State, and savings banks, Portland School for the Deaf, Old Men's Home, Old Ladies' Home, St. Elizabeth's Academy, etc. Portland has over 700 manufacturing establishments, with an annual output valued at over $15,000,000. The industries include boot and shoe factories, sugar refineries, rolling-mills, foundries, machine shops, locomotive works, engine and boiler works, petroleum refineries, match factories, chemical works, tanneries, paint and oil works, carriage and sleigh factories, manufactures of stoneware, jewelry, edge tools, varnishes, soap and lamps, meat packing establishments, coopering establishments, lumber mills, etc. Shipbuilding is still carried on, though of less importance, relatively, than in former years. Fishing and the shell-fish industry are extensively pursued. Portland was settled by the English in 1632; was burned by the Indians in 1676; and by the French and Indians in 1690; was rebuilt in 1715; burned by the English in 1775; and rebuilt in 1783. It received its city charter in 1832. Pop. (1910) 58,571; (1920) 69,272.