Aroostook County is a county in the U.S. state of Maine along the Canada–U.S. border. As of the 2020 census, the population was 67,105. Its county seat is Houlton, with offices in Caribou and Fort Kent.
The Aroostook War, or the Madawaska War, was a military and civilian-involved confrontation in 1838–1839 between the United States and the United Kingdom over the international boundary between the British colony of New Brunswick and the U.S. state of Maine. The term "war" was rhetorical; local militia units were called out but never engaged in actual combat. The event is best described as an international incident.
The Webster–Ashburton Treaty, signed August 9, 1842, was a treaty that resolved several border issues between the United States and the British North American colonies. Signed under John Tyler's presidency, it resolved the so-called Aroostook War. The provisions of the treaty included:
Fort Kent is a town in Aroostook County, Maine, United States, situated at the confluence of the Fish River and the Saint John River, on the border with New Brunswick, Canada. The population was 4,067 in the 2020 census. Fort Kent is home to an Olympic biathlete training center, an annual CAN-AM dogsled race, and the Fort Kent Blockhouse, built in reaction to the Aroostook War and in modern times designated a national historic site. Principal industries include agriculture and textiles. Fort Kent is the northern terminus of U.S. 1 and the ending point of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail.
The Aroostook River is a 112-mile-long (180 km) tributary of the Saint John River in the U.S. state of Maine and the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Its basin is the largest sub-drainage of the Saint John River.
The Republic of Madawaska was a putative republic in the northwest corner of Madawaska County, New Brunswick and adjacent areas of Aroostook County in the US state of Maine and of Quebec. The word "Madawaska" comes from the Miꞌkmaq words madawas and kak (porcupine). Thus, the Madawaska is "the country of the porcupine". The Madawaska River which flows into the Saint John River at Edmundston, New Brunswick, and Madawaska, Maine, flows through the region.
Fort McClary is a former defensive fortification of the United States military located along the southern coast at Kittery Point, Maine at the mouth of the Piscataqua River. It was used throughout the 19th century to protect approaches to the harbor of Portsmouth, New Hampshire and the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery. The property and its surviving structures are now owned and operated by the State of Maine as Fort McClary State Historic Site, including a blockhouse dating from 1844.
The Bangor and Aroostook Railroad was a United States railroad company that brought rail service to Aroostook County in northern Maine. Brightly-painted BAR boxcars attracted national attention in the 1950s. First-generation diesel locomotives operated on BAR until they were museum pieces. The economic downturn of the 1980s, coupled with the departure of heavy industry from northern Maine, forced the railroad to seek a buyer and end operations in 2003. It was succeeded by the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway.
John Fairfield was an attorney and politician from Maine. He served as a U.S. Congressman, governor and U.S. Senator.
Fort Halifax is a former British colonial outpost on the banks of the Sebasticook River, just above its mouth at the Kennebec River, in Winslow, Maine. Originally built as a wooden palisaded fort in 1754, during the French and Indian War, only a single blockhouse survives. The oldest blockhouse in the United States, it is preserved as Fort Halifax State Historic Site, and is open to the public in the warmer months. The fort guarded Wabanaki canoe routes that reached to the St. Lawrence and Penobscot Valleys via the Chaudière-Kennebec and Sebasticook-Souadabscook rivers. The blockhouse was declared a National Historic Landmark and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1968.
Kennebec Arsenal is a historic arsenal on Arsenal Street in Augusta, Maine. Largely developed between 1828 and 1838 in part because of border disputes with neighboring New Brunswick, it was designated a National Historic Landmark District in 2000 as a good example of a nearly intact early 19th-century munitions storage facility. The arsenal property was garrisoned until 1901, after which it was turned over to the State of Maine as an expansion of the adjacent Maine State Hospital. The state for many years housed mental health patients there.
State Route 161 (SR 161) is part of Maine's system of numbered state highways. It runs 86 miles (138 km) from Fort Fairfield to Allagash. It begins at the Fort Fairfield - Andover Border Crossing along the Canada–US border to Dickey Road near the confluence of the Allagash and Saint John rivers.
The Battle of Caribou was a minor and ultimately bloodless skirmish between U.S. and British (Canadian) armed lumberjacks during the Aroostook War. It added to the growing tensions between the respective governments and encouraged the mobilization of local militias to the area, which nearly sparked an armed conflict.
St. David Catholic Church is a historic church at 774 Main Street in Madawaska, Maine. Built in 1911, it is an architecturally distinctive blend of Baroque revival and Italian Renaissance revival architecture. The congregation was the first separate Roman Catholic congregation established in Madawaska, the result of many years' struggle, after the international border divided the French Catholic community here in 1842. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
Fort Howe was a British fort built in Saint John, New Brunswick during the American Revolution. It was erected shortly after the American siege in 1777 to protect the city from further American raids. The 18th and 19th century British Army fortification stood at the mouth of the Saint John River where it empties into the Bay of Fundy. A replica blockhouse has been constructed approximately 250 metres to the northeast of the original structure.
The Fort Fairfield–Andover Border Crossing is an international border crossing between the towns of Fort Fairfield, Maine, United States, and Southern Victoria, Canada on the Canada–US border, joining Maine State Route 161 and New Brunswick Route 190. The United States border station was built in 1933, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2014. The Canada border station was built in 2007, replacing the previous facility that was built in 1954. This crossing was a historical flashpoint during the bloodless Aroostook War of the 1830s, in which the US and Great Britain disputed the border's location. That dispute was ended with the Webster-Ashburton Treaty in 1842.
The Acadian Landing Site, also known as the Acadian Cross Historic Shrine, is a site historically significant to the French-American Acadian population of far northern Maine. Located on the southern bank of the Saint John River east of Madawaska and marked by a large marble cross, it is the site traditionally recorded as the landing point of the first Acadians to settle this region of the upper Saint John River. The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
The Jean-Baptiste Daigle House is a historic house at 4 Dubé Street in Fort Kent, Maine. Built c. 1840, it is a rare surviving example of an Acadian log house, and the only one known to be near its original location. It was built by one of a father-son pair, each named Jean-Baptiste Daigle, and moved a short distance about 20 years after its construction. It is now covered by weatherboard siding, obscuring its log structure. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013.
The Musée Culturel du Mont-Carmel is a museum of local history on United States Route 1 in Grand Isle, Maine. It is located in the former Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church, one of the only surviving 19th-century Acadian churches in northern Maine. The architecturally distinctive building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
Wolastoq, changed in 1604 by Samuel de Champlain to Fleuve Saint-Jean, is a river flowing within the Dawnland region for approximately 418 miles (673 km) from headwaters in the Notre Dame Mountains near the Maine-Quebec border through New Brunswick to the northwest shore of the Bay of Fundy. The river and its tributary drainage basin formed the territorial countries of the Wolastoqiyik and Passamaquoddy First Nations prior to European colonization, and it remains a cultural centre of the Wabanaki Confederacy to this day.
