Bath is a city in Sagadahoc County, Maine, United States. Bath is included in the Brunswick micropolitan area. Bath has a 2024 population of 8,870. It is also the county seat of Sagadahoc County. Bath is currently growing at a rate of 0.29% annually and its population has increased by 1.21% since the most recent census, which recorded a population of 8,764 in 2020. The city is popular with tourists, many drawn by its 19th-century

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and construction, constructi ...

. It is home to the

Bath Iron Works Bath Iron Works (BIW) is a major United States shipyard located on the Kennebec River in Bath, Maine, founded in 1884 as Bath Iron Works, Limited. Since 1995, Bath Iron Works has been a subsidiary of General Dynamics, one of the world's largest ...

and Heritage Days Festival, held annually on the

Fourth of July Independence Day, known colloquially as the Fourth of July, is a federal holiday in the United States which commemorates the ratification of the Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, establishing th ...

weekend. It is commonly known as "The City of Ships" due to the number of sailing ships that were built in the Bath shipyards. Bath is part of the Portland-South Portland-Biddeford metropolitan statistical area.

History

Abenaki The Abenaki ( Abenaki: ''Wαpánahki'') are Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands of Canada and the United States. They are an Algonquian-speaking people and part of the Wabanaki Confederacy. The Eastern Abenaki language was pred ...

Indians called the area Sagadahoc, meaning "mouth of big river". It was a reference to the

Kennebec River The Kennebec River (Abenaki language, Abenaki: ''Kinəpékʷihtəkʷ'') is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map , accessed June 30, 2011 natural river within the U.S. state of Ma ...

, which

Samuel de Champlain Samuel de Champlain (; 13 August 1574#Fichier]For a detailed analysis of his baptismal record, see #Ritch, RitchThe baptism act does not contain information about the age of Samuel, neither his birth date nor his place of birth. – 25 December ...

explored in 1605. Popham Colony was established in 1607 downstream, together with Fort St George. The settlement failed due to harsh weather and lack of leadership, but the colonists built the

New World The term "New World" is used to describe the majority of lands of Earth's Western Hemisphere, particularly the Americas, and sometimes Oceania."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: ...

's first oceangoing vessel constructed by English shipwrights, the '' Virginia of Sagadahoc''. It provided passage back to England. Most of Bath, Maine, was settled by travelers from Bath, England. The next settlement at Sagadahoc was about 1660, when the land was taken from an Indian sagamore known as Robinhood. Incorporated as part of Georgetown in 1753, Bath was set off and incorporated as a town on February 17, 1781. It was named by the postmaster, Dummer Sewall, after

Bath Bath may refer to: * Bathing, immersion in a fluid ** Bathtub, a large open container for water, in which a person may wash their body ** Public bathing, a public place where people bathe * Thermae, ancient Roman public bathing facilities Plac ...

Somerset Somerset ( , ), Archaism, archaically Somersetshire ( , , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel, Gloucestershire, and Bristol to the north, Wiltshire to the east ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. In 1844, a portion of the town was set off to create West Bath. On June 14, 1847, Bath was incorporated as a city, and in 1854 designated county seat. Land was annexed from West Bath in 1855. Several industries developed in Bath, including

lumber Lumber is wood that has been processed into uniform and useful sizes (dimensional lumber), including beams and planks or boards. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, window frames). ...

iron Iron is a chemical element; it has symbol Fe () and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's o ...

, and

brass Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc, in proportions which can be varied to achieve different colours and mechanical, electrical, acoustic and chemical properties, but copper typically has the larger proportion, generally copper and zinc. I ...

, with trade in

ice Ice is water that is frozen into a solid state, typically forming at or below temperatures of 0 ° C, 32 ° F, or 273.15 K. It occurs naturally on Earth, on other planets, in Oort cloud objects, and as interstellar ice. As a naturally oc ...

and

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal i ...

. The city and surrounding area is renowned for its shipbuilding and, at one point, was home to more than 200 shipbuilding firms. The industry began in 1743, when Jonathan Philbrook and his sons built two vessels. Since that time, roughly 5,000 vessels have been launched from Bath, which became the nation's fifth largest

seaport A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as Hamburg, Manc ...

by the mid-19th century. The

clipper ship A clipper was a type of mid-19th-century Merchant ship, merchant Sailing ship, sailing vessel, designed for speed. The term was also retrospectively applied to the Baltimore clipper, which originated in the late 18th century. Clippers were gen ...

s built in Bath sailed to ports around the world. The last commercial enterprise to build wooden ships in the city was the Percy & Small Shipyard, whose

schooner A schooner ( ) is a type of sailing ship, sailing vessel defined by its Rig (sailing), rig: fore-and-aft rigged on all of two or more Mast (sailing), masts and, in the case of a two-masted schooner, the foremast generally being shorter than t ...

Wyoming Wyoming ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States, Western United States. It borders Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho t ...

'' is considered the largest wooden ship in world history, and which was acquired for preservation in 1975 by the Maine Maritime Museum. The most well-known

shipyard A shipyard, also called a dockyard or boatyard, is a place where ships are shipbuilding, built and repaired. These can be yachts, military vessels, cruise liners or other cargo or passenger ships. Compared to shipyards, which are sometimes m ...

is the

, which was founded in 1884 by Thomas W. Hyde. Hyde became the firm's general manager in 1888. It has built hundreds of wooden and steel vessels, mostly

warships A warship or combatant ship is a naval ship that is used for naval warfare. Usually they belong to the navy branch of the armed forces of a nation, though they have also been operated by individuals, cooperatives and corporations. As well as ...

for the U.S. Navy. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, Bath Iron Works launched one new ship approximately every 17 days. The shipyard today is a major regional employer, and currently operates as a division of the General Dynamics Corporation. In the Bath, Maine, anti-Catholic riot of 1854, an Irish Catholic church was burned. The city is noted for its Federal,

Greek Revival Greek Revival architecture is a architectural style, style that began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe, the United States, and Canada, ...

, and

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century It ...

architecture, including the 1858 Custom House and Post Office designed by Ammi B. Young. Bath is a sister city to Shariki (now Tsugaru) in Japan, where the locally built

full-rigged ship A full-rigged ship or fully rigged ship is a sailing ship, sailing vessel with a sail plan of three or more mast (sailing), masts, all of them square rig, square-rigged. Such a vessel is said to have a ship rig or be ship-rigged, with each mas ...

'' Cheseborough'' was wrecked in 1889. Scenes from the movies '' Message in a Bottle'' (1999) and '' The Man Without a Face'' (1993) were filmed in Bath. In 1915, Fred Cox, owner of Hallet's Drug Store on Front Street, purchased the street clock standing at the corner of Front and Centre Streets from

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

, where it was built by Seth Thomas Clock Company four years earlier. It was moved from 70 Front Street to its current location in 1966, having been purchased by Harry Crooker. His family later donated it to the city, with the proviso that it be maintained and kept in a continuously operating condition, else it be returned to the family. The clock was restored in 2000. Crooker established local construction company in 1935. It was sold in 2014, after 79 years of family ownership. File:Along the Waterfront, Bath, ME.jpg, Waterfront in 1907 File:Front Street, Bath, ME.jpg, Front Street () File:Custom House, Bath, Maine.jpg, Custom House (2025)

Geography

Bath is located at (43.916293, −69.822565). According to the

United States Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau, officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the Federal statistical system, U.S. federal statistical system, responsible for producing data about the American people and American economy, econ ...

, the city has a total area of , of which is land and is water.

Greenspace

The city of Bath includes several nature preserves that are protected by the Kennebec Estuary Land Trust. These areas include Thorne Head Preserve (located 2.1 miles north of Bath) and Butler Head Preserve (located 5.2 miles north of Bath). There are also numerous parks and walking trails located throughout the town, such as the Whiskeag Trail.

Demographics

2010 census

As of the

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

of 2010, there were 8,514 people, 3,932 households, and 2,172 families living in the city. The

population density Population density (in agriculture: Standing stock (disambiguation), standing stock or plant density) is a measurement of population per unit land area. It is mostly applied to humans, but sometimes to other living organisms too. It is a key geog ...

was . There were 4,437 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 95.1%

White White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...

, 1.2%

African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...

, 0.3% Native American, 0.6% Asian, 0.4% from other races, and 2.3% from two or more races.

Hispanic The term Hispanic () are people, Spanish culture, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or broadly. In some contexts, Hispanic and Latino Americans, especially within the United States, "Hispanic" is used as an Ethnici ...

or Latino of any race were 1.8% of the population. There were 3,932 households, of which 27.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 37.5% were

married couples Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognised union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children (if any), and b ...

living together, 13.6% had a female householder with no husband present, 4.2% had a male householder with no wife present, and 44.8% were non-families. 36.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 13.9% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.14 and the average family size was 2.79. The median age in the city was 41 years. 22.2% of residents were under the age of 18; 8.1% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 24.7% were from 25 to 44; 28.5% were from 45 to 64; and 16.5% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 46.7% male and 53.3% female.

2000 census

As of the

of 2000, there were 9,266 people, 4,042 households, and 2,344 families living in the city. The population density was . There were 4,383 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 94.92%

, 1.60%

Black Black is a color that results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without chroma, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness.Eva Heller, ''P ...

, 0.58% Native American, 0.47% Asian, 0.13%

Pacific Islander Pacific Islanders, Pasifika, Pasefika, Pacificans, or rarely Pacificers are the peoples of the list of islands in the Pacific Ocean, Pacific Islands. As an ethnic group, ethnic/race (human categorization), racial term, it is used to describe th ...

, 0.68% from other races, and 1.62% from two or more races.

or Latino of any race were 1.76% of the population. There were 4,042 households, out of which 29.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 40.8% were

living together, 13.1% had a female householder with no husband present, and 42.0% were non-families. 34.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 13.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.26 and the average family size was 2.91. In the city, the population was spread out, with 25.0% under the age of 18, 8.4% from 18 to 24, 29.5% from 25 to 44, 23.0% from 45 to 64, and 14.1% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 37 years. For every 100 females, there were 91.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 86.9 males. The median household income in the city was $36,372, and the median family income was $45,830. Males had a median income of $35,064 versus $22,439 for females. The

per capita income Per capita income (PCI) or average income measures the average income earned per person in a given area (city, region, country, etc.) in a specified year. In many countries, per capita income is determined using regular population surveys, such ...

for the city was $19,112. About 9.3% of families and 11.8% of the population were below the

poverty line The poverty threshold, poverty limit, poverty line, or breadline is the minimum level of income deemed adequate in a particular country. The poverty line is usually calculated by estimating the total cost of one year's worth of necessities for ...

, including 17.5% of those under age 18 and 9.6% of those age 65 or over. 2013 Voter registration Maine requires voters to register with a party to vote in primaries, also called a

closed primary Primary elections or primaries are elections held to determine which candidates will run in an upcoming general election. In a partisan primary, a political party selects a candidate. Depending on the state and/or party, there may be an "open pri ...

. However, voters are not required to register with a party to vote for their primary winners in the general election.

Government

Education

* RSU 1 ** Dike-Newell Elementary, grades K–2 ** Fisher-Mitchell Elementary, grades 3–5 ** Bath Middle School – serves 430 students in grades 6–8 as of 2006. The school's mascot is ''the Destroyers'', a type of ship built by the Bath Iron Works. The school colors are blue and white. ** Morse High School – The Morse High Shipbuilders (team). Sports include Cross Country, Football, Soccer, Cheerleading, Swimming, Basketball, Wrestling, Tennis, Indoor/Outdoor Track & Field, Lacrosse, Softball, and Baseball. Clubs include the International Club, Ambassadors Club, Debate Team, Math Team, and more. The school colors are blue and white. A new school building was completed in 2020, with students moving in during February 2021. Morse High School (previously Bath High School), which was founded in 1891, is believed to have the oldest active High School Alumni Association in the United States. Morse3

* Hyde School, a college preparatory school – serves 149 students in grades 9–12 as of 2012. The school's mascot is the wolfpack. The school colors are navy blue and gold.

Library

* Patten Free Library

Notable people

Sister city relations

* – Tsugaru, Aomori, Japan – Friendship City from 2006

Climate

Bath has a

humid continental climate A humid continental climate is a climatic region defined by Russo-German climatologist Wladimir Köppen in 1900, typified by four distinct seasons and large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot (and often humid) summers, and cold ...

(

Köppen Köppen is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Bernd Köppen (1951–2014), German pianist and composer * Carl Köppen (1833-1907), German military advisor in Meiji era Japan * Edlef Köppen (1893–1939), German author ...

''Dfb'') with cold and snowy winters and mild summers. Precipitation is high the whole year, with a sizeable snow pack usually forming during winter months. Compared to inland areas, winters are not severe, although colder than areas right on the ocean.

Diurnal temperature variation In meteorology, diurnal temperature variation is the variation between a high air temperature and a low temperature that occurs during the same day. Temperature lag Temperature lag, also known as thermal inertia, is an important factor in diur ...

is strong throughout the year. In winter this means that highs around freezing, while lows in the single-digit Fahrenheit range are common.

Sites of interest

* Maine Maritime Museum * Maine's First Ship * Chocolate Church Arts Center * Studio Theatre of Bath * Midcoast Youth Center * Bath Municipal Band File:Washington St. from Elm, Bath, ME.jpg, Washington Street in 1914 File:Library Park, Bath, ME.jpg, Library Park in 1917 File:Old City Hall, Bath, ME.jpg, Old City Hall in 1909

Cemeteries

Bath has twenty known cemeteries."Grave matters: Digging into Bath’s ancient cemeteries"
- '' Portland Press Herald'', January 28, 2019 This is a relatively small number compared to neighboring communities ( Phippsburg, for example, has over one hundred), because, from the early 1900s, Bath was densely populated, which left less room for family cemeteries. The city maintains its "big three" cemeteries: Oak Grove, Maple Grove and Calvary. It also manages four smaller burials grounds: Dummer Sewall (Dummer and Beacon streets), David Trufant (claimed by author Parker McCobb Reed in 1894 to be the oldest burying ground in Bath;''History of Bath and Environs, Sagadahoc County, Maine: 1607-1894'', Parker McCobb Reed (1894)
/ref> Spring and Middle streets), Pettingill (Riverview Road) and Fairview (on Fairview Lane). Only Pettengill has pieces of stones remaining, including that of a Revolutionary War veteran. Graveyards not managed by the city, which tend to be old family plots, include Harrison (Stoney Island Road), Crawford (North Bath Road), Roberts-Edgecomb (North Bath Road), Edgecomb (North Bath Road), Purington (North Bath and Whiskeag roads), Ham (Ridge and Whiskeag roads), Ward (Bayshore Road) and the "Irish" ground (Varney Mill Road). The Whittam (or Witham) graveyard (Bayshore Road) and Wise-Welch (North Bath Road), which includes Bath's oldest documented burial in 1749, were identified in the 1970s, but are not found today. Those found in sources, yet have no burials or exact locations identified, are South Street (possibly South and Washington streets), Marshall (Washington and Marshall streets), the "Turnpike" ground (likely in West Bath), and Marr's Hill (in the area of Corliss and Washington streets). There is also a Ward Cemetery.

References

External links

City of Bath, Maine

Patten Free Library

Bath Historical Society

Sagadahoc Preservation, Inc.

Main Street Bath

Things to Do Bath Maine

Maine's First Ship – Reconstructing the ''Virginia''
{{Authority control County seats in Maine Populated places established in 1753 Portland metropolitan area, Maine Cities in Sagadahoc County, Maine Port cities and towns in Maine 1753 establishments in the Thirteen Colonies Cities in Maine Populated coastal places in Maine