Lincolnville Timeline
THE PRE-EUROPEAN ERA
Ten thousand years ago a glacial ice sheet covered Lincolnville to a
depth of several thousand feet. Look around and see the evidence of
the Ice Age everywhere.
1. The hills are "bald"
or nearly so, with only a thin skin of topsoil. Climb to the top of
Bald Rock or Cameron, Ducktrap, Frohock, Derry or Levensellar Mountains
to see how the hills were scraped clean by the ice.
2. Several ponds were formed in glacier-scraped depressions which filled
with melting glacial ice: Norton, Coleman Levensellar, Moody and Pitcher
Ponds.
3. Rocks, carried along in the slow-moving glacier, were dropped with
the ice melted. These rocks were moved by early farmers to boundary
walls, still visible all around town. If the land was never farmed the
surface may be covered with boulders of all sizes.
4. Gravel beds were deposited by glacial rivers flowing off the melting
ice.
Stone, shell, bone and ceramic artifacts found along Lincolnville’s
shores show that native peoples hunted and fished here as long as 6,000
years ago. The earliest population may have been the Moorehead Phase
or "Red Paint" people, skilled ocean fishermen who hunted
swordfish in a much warmer Gulf of Maine.
Several shell middens, or refuse heaps, have eroded out of the banks
of our shoreline, marking early native people’s campsites.
European explorers, starting with the Vikings and included John Cabot
and Samuel de Champlain and others, probably sailed by Lincolnville’s
shore on their visits to the Maine coast, though there is no record
that they ever landed here. The earliest dated artifact of European
origin found here are some fragments of a clay pipe made between 1650
and 1660, probably for trade with the native population. The pipe could
have been brought to Lincolnville from Fort Pentagoet across the Bay
in Castine.
Balance Rock on Fernald’s Neck is a striking example of a glacial
erratic, or large glacier-borne boulder.