The Rusticators — Camden's Summer Colony
Near Camden, Maine
After the Civil War, a generation of affluent Americans discovered Maine. They came by steamboat and later by train, escaping the summer heat of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, and they built summer cottages overlooking the harbors that in many cases were larger than most people's permanent houses. Maine promoters called these seasonal visitors rusticators, and they transformed every significant harbor town on the coast, Camden among them.
The rusticators who came to Camden were drawn by the same combination of mountains and water that draws visitors today. They built rambling shingle-style houses on the hills above the harbor, hired local boatmen for sailing trips in the bay, and established a social season that ran from the Fourth of July through Labor Day. The Whitehall Inn, which opened in a converted sea captain's mansion around nineteen oh one, catered specifically to this crowd, and it was in the inn's parlor that Edna Millay first recited Renascence to an audience of summer people in nineteen twelve.
The summer colony remained intact well into the twentieth century. Camden never became exclusively a tourist town the way some Maine communities did. Year-round residents ran the fishing boats, the stores, and eventually the mills, and the summer people came and went around them. The seasonal pattern continues today, though now the visitors arrive by car rather than steamboat. Camden's particular achievement is that it has been beautiful and desirable for a century and a half without becoming a caricature of itself.
