Kittery, Maine

Kittery, at the very southern tip of Maine where the Piscataqua River meets the sea, holds a distinction that might surprise a visitor browsing its famous outlet stores: it claims to be the oldest incorporated town in Maine, chartered in sixteen forty-seven, more than a hundred and seventy years before Maine even became a state.

English settlers arrived here as early as sixteen twenty-three, drawn by the deep-water harbor, the river's tidal strength, and forests of timber stretching endlessly to the north. The town was named by one of its founders, Alexander Shapleigh, after his family's estate in Devon, England: Kittery Court at Kingswear. From those earliest years, Kittery's destiny was tied to the water and the ships built to travel it.

Shipbuilding defined Kittery for two centuries. The deep channels of the Piscataqua gave vessels easy access to the open Atlantic, and the forests of the Maine interior provided an inexhaustible supply of lumber. By the colonial era, Kittery's yards were producing vessels of every size. The most celebrated ship ever launched here was the Ranger, built in seventeen seventy-seven and commanded by John Paul Jones. The Ranger was, by some accounts, the first ship to fly the newly designed American flag, and Jones used her to carry the audacious fight to British waters, raiding the English coast and capturing a Royal Navy warship in open combat.

Across the river, connected by bridges but technically in Maine, sits Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, established on June twelfth, eighteen hundred, the oldest continuously operating naval shipyard in the United States. Its story belongs as much to Kittery as to New Hampshire, since the shipyard sits on Seavey's Island in Maine waters.

Kittery today draws shoppers from across the Northeast to its miles of outlet stores, but the Piscataqua still runs fast and cold beside the oldest town in Maine.