(1) Stockton Harbor

Sunset over Stockton Harbor

IIn the 1880s, Stockton became Stockton Springs, a marketing ploy aimed at bringing city dwellers to come and enjoy the town’s spring water, reputed to have health benefits. A hotel was built on Cape Jellison, whose foundation can still be seen.

Stockton Springs occupies the western side of the mouth of the Penobscot River in what today is Waldo County. Penobscot Indians hunted and fished the area for more than a thousand years, historians believe. It is a perfect "hurricane hole" providing a protected mooring during those famouse Maine Nor'Easters.

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(1) Stockton Harbor (2) Fort Point (3) The River (4) Narrows Bridge (5) Fort Knox (6) Bucksport (7) Verona
 (8) The Bay (9) Fort George(10) Castine (11) Islesboro (12) Belfast(13) Searsport (14) Sears Island

In the 19th century, commercial shipping and shipbuilding were the mainstays of the town’s economy, enhanced by connections to the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad. Bradford said the Cape Jellison docks area on the east side of Stockton harbor, known locally as "Cape Docks," was a world class port of its day. It had the longest wooden docks in the world at the time and included two or three railroad sidings linking it to the B&A, and a potato shed that was 600 feet long.

The Big Pier

Not far from the site on Cape Jellison occupied by Fort Pownall from 1759 to 1775, three massive wooden piers were built out from the Cape between 1905 and 1907 to reach the deep navigable waters of Stockton Harbor. Known as the "Big Docks" and measuring 1,100 feet, 1,600 feet, and 1,750 feet in length, they were serviced by the rails of the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad to provide a second rail connection on the Bay to the Penobscot region for the up to twenty or more cargo schooners and steamers arriving by then in the Penobscot Bay each week.

Within two decades after they had been built, the docks at Cape Jellison had already fallen into almost complete disuse, and their brief "era" ended altogether when they were destroyed by fire on November 8, 1924. The pilings for the piers are still visible at low tide, however, as are some of their enormous granite runways.

  

 

 

 

 

 

Defence

n 1779, during the Penobscot Expedition's inglorious retreat, the ship "Defense" was scuttled in Stockton Harbor, and sank between Cape Jellison and Sears Island.

The Defense was the subject of an archaeological investigation in the 1970s with some of the ship brought to the surface. After inspection, it was returned to the harbor bottom.

It is said that "...some of the fishermen know where it is". Other vessels are believed to have landed on the west side of the river just north of Sandy Point including Paul Revere