Can you name this lovely harbor village?
[cs_drop_cap letter=”I” color=”#ff6600″ size=”5em” ]n 1998, the working harbor in this quiet village did a star turn in an adaptation of a best-selling Nicholas Sparks novel — playing the Outer Banks of North Carolina, oddly enough. To anyone but a hapless Hollywood scout, however, there’s no mistaking this idyllic anchorage for anyplace but Maine. In fact, some of Maine’s earliest colonial history unfolded here. The Wawenock band of the Abenaki people lived and fished this area before European contact; the English explorer George Weymouth kidnapped five of them when he laid anchor nearby in 1605. One Wawenock who may have witnessed that incursion as a child was Samoset, a minor chief who subsequently picked up some English from the colonial traders who followed. In 1621, he was visiting the Wampanoag, far south of his homeland, when he came upon the Mayflower pilgrims of Plymouth Rock and famously greeted them in English. Four years later, Samoset and a settler from this waterfront village signed the first deed of land between native people and the New England colonists, trading most of the peninsula where this harbor is found for 50 beaver pelts. A monument to the transaction — and to Samoset — stands not 200 yards from where this photo was taken.❯❯ If you can name this lovely harbor village, submit your answer below. We’ll feature our favorite letter in an upcoming issue — and send the winner a Down East wall calendar.