Snug Harbor Camps
Snug Harbor Camps, located on Great Pond in Belgrade, was closely associated for much of the 20th century with Morris Deering, a prominent figure in the region’s hospitality and tourism history. Maurice Deering was born on May 17, 1898, in Quidnick, Rhode Island. In...
Day’s Store — Belgrade Lakes
Since the late 1950s, a humble family general store on the shores of Long Pond has grown into one of Belgrade’s most beloved local institutions. In 1958, Jim and Mae Day, together with their son Gary and his wife Joyce, opened the doors of what would come to be known...
Camp Merryweather
For more than 100 years, the Belgrade Lakes have been known for their summer youth camps. The very first one opened in 1900 on Great Pond. That was Camp Merryweather. At the time, Camp Merryweather not only was the first youth camp on Great Pond but also the first...
Tukey Brothers Lumber — North Belgrade
For more than eight decades, the Tukey name was woven into the economic life of Belgrade, shaped by the rhythms of the forest, the lakes and the steady work of a family-run mill. The business began in the 1930s with Hugh Carlton Tukey, a young Belgrade resident who...
Paul Yeaton House
In 2000, Connie Parker acquired the 19th-century Yeaton farmhouse at 422 West Road. She had long remembered her father—an architect from New Jersey—with a fondness for old homes, and his habit of pointing out details such as the hand-carved “fan” over the indigo front...
The Birches
The Birches is a one-and-a-half-story, rectangular, gable-roofed frame building that is sheathed entirely in wood shingles. It has an enclosed, shallow hip-roofed front porch and an eyebrow dormer on one side of its broad roof. A two-car garage located off the...
The Burbank House
The Eleazer Burbank HouseThe “mystery house” has been identified! Dana Sturtevant and John Willey recognized it as the house located on the right as you start up the hill heading north on Rte. 8/11, the Oakland Road, just beyond its intersection with Cemetery Road....
Pine Island Camp (Great Pond, Belgrade)
Founded in 1902 by Clarence Colby, Pine Island Camp occupies a wooded island in the middle of Great Pond, the largest lake in the Belgrade Lakes region. From its earliest years the camp’s location — accessible only by boat — reflected Colby’s belief that boys would...
Hammond Lumber Company – A Belgrade Story
From the farm to the forestClifton “Skip” Hammond was born September 22, 1927, in Belgrade, Maine, and grew up on the family farm. Like many in rural Maine, he learned early how to work with his hands, splitting his youth between chores in the barn and “woods work” in...
Camp Bomazeen — A Great Pond History
Camp Bomazeen is located on the eastern shore of Great Pond in Belgrade Lakes and has operated for nearly eighty years as an important youth camp in central Maine. The camp formally opened in 1945 as a Boy Scouts of America camp. Its dedication drew Scouts from ten...
Old South Church
In his History of Baptists in Maine, Joshua Millet wrote in 1845 that, on April 29, 1806, twelve members did “gather a church in Belgrade”. Elder I. Case was the first preacher, followed by Asa Wilbur, Gould, Joseph Palmer, Moses Low, Kendal and Benjamin Bishbee. By...
The Union Church
In 1870, a church was built at Belgrade Mills (now Belgrade Lakes) under the sponsorship of Methodists and Adventists. A large part of the cost was borne by David Golder, the affluent owner of the spool factory. This Union Church was open all year until 1954 when...