Penobscot River

The Penobscot River (Abenaki: ''Pαnawάhpskewtəkʷ'') is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data
The National Map
, accessed June 22, 2011 river in the U.S. state of Maine. Including the river's West Branch and South Branch increases the Penobscot's length to , making it the second-longest river system in Maine and the longest entirely in the state. Its drainage basin contains .

It arises from four branches in several lakes in north-central Maine, which flow generally east. After the uniting of the West Branch with the East Branch at Medway (), the Penobscot flows south, past the city of Bangor, where it becomes navigable. Also at Bangor is the tributary Kenduskeag Stream. It empties into the Atlantic Ocean in Penobscot Bay. It is home to the Penobscot people that live on Indian Island, and considered to be The People's lifeblood.

History

Norumbega

Most historians have accepted the Penobscot region as Jean Allefonsce's source for Norumbega, though the matter was hotly contested by some nineteenth century antiquarians, who argued that the name should be identified with their own river or region.

Navigation

The Penobscot River was an early trade corridor to interior Maine from the Atlantic coast. Ocean ships could navigate upstream to Bangor. The cities of Rockland, Belfast, Brewer and Bangor, and the towns of Rockport, Camden, Northport, Searsport, Stockton Springs, Castine, Bucksport, Frankfort, Winterport, Orrington, and Hampden developed adjacent to the Penobscot River estuary. The river upstream of Bangor became an important transportation corridor for log driving to bring wooden logs and pulpwood from interior forests to sawmills and paper mills built to use water power where the city of Howland and the towns of Veazie, Orono, Old Town, Milford, Passadumkeag, West Enfield, Lincoln, Winn, Mattawamkeag, Medway, and Millinocket developed.

European colony

The first European known to have explored the river in 1524 was Estêvão Gomes, a Portuguese navigator who sailed in the service of Spain in the 1520s. The Spaniards, led by Gomez, were the first Europeans to make landfall in what is now Maine, followed by the Frenchman Samuel de Champlain in 1605. A few years later French Jesuit priests came among the Penobscot people as missionaries and converted them to Catholicism. The French settlement of Pentagouet, now Castine, was founded at the point where the river becomes Penobscot Bay, and the Penobscot people made a permanent settlement at Indian Old Town, Maine on an island above the head of navigation, around the Catholic mission. Throughout the first half of the 17th centuries, these were likely the only permanent settlements on the river, although the Penobscots considered the entire river and bay their hunting ground and maintained other seasonal villages along its banks.

In 1669, the Mohawk made several raids from the west that were very destructive to the Penobscot people. During Father Rale's War, New England settlers from Massachusetts also sent periodic raiding parties to the Penobscot, destroying the primary native village in 1723. In a treaty of 1752, however, Massachusetts laid claim to the entire Penobscot watershed, and in 1759 the Pownall Expedition, led by Governor Thomas Pownall, established Fort Pownall on Cape Jellison in what is now Stockton Springs. This signaled the end of French influence over the Penobscot, and the incorporation of the Penobscot River valley into New England.

British colony

The first permanent settler from British North America on the river was Joshua Treat (1726–1802), who was initially the armorer and translator at Fort Pownall. His oldest son, Joshua Treat, Jr., built a log house and sawmill at Marsh Bay in what is now Frankfort, and other members of their extended family, joined by additional settlers from Massachusetts and New Hampshire, pushed ever further up-river, eventually restricting the Penobscot people to Indian Island (Old Town, Maine), the present Penobscot Indian Reservation.

American Revolution and modern history

During the American Revolutionary War, the river and bay were the site of the disastrous 1779 Penobscot Expedition, where an entire American fleet was destroyed in a botched attempt to retake Maine from the British. During the War of 1812, the British again invaded Maine and defeated an American force at the Battle of Hampden, sacking the town of Bangor in the process. To prevent this from happening a third time, and because the nearby boundary between the United States and British Canada was still contested into the 1840s, the Federal government in 1844 began constructing a huge granite fort, Fort Knox, opposite the town of Bucksport, near the mouth of the river. The fort never fired a shot in anger, but remains one of the Penobscot's major man-made landmarks.

In the 19th century the river was a conduit for the transport of logs from Maine's Great North Woods, to be sawed into lumber at mills around Old Town and Orono, and transported on ships from Bangor, at the head of tide. (The average high tide at Bangor is as of 2009.) A secondary economic use made of the river late in the century was as a source of sawed ice for urban markets.

In 1931 the Waldo-Hancock Bridge was opened to carry US Route 1 across the river at the Penobscot Narrows between Prospect, in Waldo County, and Verona Island just below Bucksport.

During the 20th century, lumbering was largely supplanted by papermaking, in the form of large wood pulp and paper mills located all along the river from Millinocket and East Millinocket in the north, to South Brewer and Bucksport in the south. Wood pulp and paper mills create dioxins as a byproduct of the chlorine bleaching process in making paper. This substance was discharged from seven mills located close to the Tribal community of Penobscot people, along the Penobscot river. Dioxins, which are highly potent toxic chemicals that may cause cancer and other health problems, were being poured daily into this adjacent river, the Penobscot. Rebecca Sockbeson, a Penobscot, is quoted saying that her people have survived on fish from this river, but "now we are dying from it." She continued on to say that "neither dioxin nor cancer is indigenous to the Penobscot people, however they are both pervasive in my tribal community." As an Indigenous community trying to maintain traditional subsistence living and eating such as fishing or foraging, their way of life and their physical bodies are unequally burdened by issues of water quality and pollution. The health and survival of the Penobscot people is further threatened by the impact that persistent organic pollutants (POPs) have on reproduction and the health of their children. The 2015 collaborative report, The Penobscot River and Environmental Contaminants: Assessment of Tribal Exposure Through Sustenance Lifeways, confirms through a four-year quantitative study that these unequal burdens and harmful level of toxins are very real threats and realities faced by the community’s indigenous people. Sockbeson concludes that a treaty is required to ensure that "the breast and spoon we feed our babies with is not filled with cancer, diabetes, learning disabilities, and attention deficit isorder"

The development of cheap hydropower also attracted other types of light manufacturing, like textiles and shoes.

21st century

In the 21st century, with the continuing decline of the Maine paper industry, and the divestiture of its woodlands, the Penobscot watershed has become more and more associated with recreational use (fishing, hunting, boating, and tourism) and less with manufacturing.

Only in 2022, after more than a half century of mercury contamination, Maine’s longest river is finally getting cleaned up.
As part of the Penobscot River Restoration Project, several dams were modified or removed to improve river conditions. Demolition began on the Great Works Dam in 2012, and the Veazie Dam in 2013. A fish ladder was installed at Milford Dam. A fish bypass was installed at Howland Dam. This led to an increase in the number of Atlantic Salmon, Shad

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