Saco, Maine

Saco is one of the oldest settlements in Maine, with English traders arriving by sixteen thirty-one at the mouth of the Saco River. The name comes from the Abenaki word for the river, roughly meaning outflowing or the river that flows out to sea. Through the seventeen hundreds Saco and neighboring Biddeford grew up as twin mill cities sharing the same falls.

By the eighteen forties the Saco River was powering some of the largest textile mills in New England, drawing workers from Quebec and Ireland. Saco split from Biddeford as its own community in seventeen sixty-two and became a city in eighteen sixty-seven, but they still share a river, a history, and a landscape shaped entirely by cotton and water power. The mills are quieter now, their great brick facades converted to apartments and offices along the waterfront.