Scarborough, Maine

Scarborough was first settled around sixteen thirty and incorporated in sixteen fifty-eight, making it one of the oldest towns in Maine. Named after Scarborough in North Yorkshire, England, it sits where the Dunstan River meets Saco Bay, and the English saw it as prime coastal farmland. The town was destroyed twice in the seventeenth century during the conflicts between English settlers and the Wabanaki Confederacy, in King Philip's War and again in King William's War, and had to be resettled both times.

Despite that violent start, Scarborough grew steadily and is today one of the fastest-growing communities in southern Maine, a suburb of Portland with one of the finest stretches of barrier beach on the New England coast. Three hundred and fifty years of history under a single town name.