Bangor, Maine

Bangor was incorporated in seventeen ninety-one, but its real moment came in the eighteen forties and fifties, when it claimed the title of Lumber Capital of the World. More than one hundred and fifty million board feet of lumber moved through Bangor each year, and Bangor's waterfront was a roaring tangle of mills, ships, and taverns. The boom collapsed when the old-growth forests ran out, and Bangor reinvented itself as a commercial hub for northern Maine.

The city is also the hometown of Stephen King, who set many of his novels in a fictionalized version of the area he called Derry. A giant Paul Bunyan statue on Main Street still salutes the lumber era that made Bangor rich and then left it behind.