BANGOR, a city of Maine, U.S.A., on the west bank of the Penobscot river, at the mouth of the Kenduskeag and the head of navigation, 6om. from the ocean and 75m. north-east of the State capital, Augusta; a port of entry both for ships and aircraft and the county seat of Penobscot county. It is on the Atlantic high way, and is served by the Maine Central and the Bangor and Aroo stook railways and by the Seaboard Navigation Company. It has a council-manager form of government under a new charter of 1931. The population was 21,85o in 19oo; 24,803 in 191o; 25,978 in 192o, of whom 3,74o were foreign-born white (chiefly Cana dians) ; and was 28,749 in 193o.
Bangor is the financial and commercial centre of a large agri cultural and industrial region, in which wood-pulp, paper, textile, cheese, and canoe manufacturing and vegetable, sardine, and blue berry canning are the leading industries. Bangor and its neigh bouring city Brewer together have more than ?5 diversified indus tries. Hydro-electric power is available from the Penobscot, Union, and Machias rivers, and the site of the unfinished tidal power project at Passamaquoddy bay is only 135m. away.
Bangor is also the cultural and medical centre of eastern Maine. It supports a symphony orchestra and an annual music festival, and its public library has 184,914 volumes. The Bangor theologi cal seminary (Congregational; incorporated 1814) was established here in 1819. At Orono, 7m. up the river, is the State university (founded 1865), which has an annual enrolment of more than 1,70o. Bangor has a State hospital for mental diseases and a community general hospital, and a tuberculosis sanatorium.
In 1604 Samuel de Champlain ascended the Penobscot to the site of Bangor, in search of the legendary city of Norumbega, but found there only an important rendezvous of the Indians. The first permanent settler, Jacob Buswell, came from Salisbury, Mass., in 1769. Originally called Kenduskeag, or Conduskeag, the place was incorporated a town in 1791 ; the name Bangor, being substi tuted for the newly chosen Sunbury by the Rev. Seth Noble after a favourite hymn, when he was sent to Boston in 1791 to petition for incorporation. The first saw mill was built in 1772; the first vessel in 1791; and the first bridge across the Penobscot to Brewer in 1832. Bangor was incorporated a city in 1834. In 1779 it was the site of the ill-fated Penobscot expedition. In 1814 it was occu pied by the British.
After 1820 began the golden age of lumbering and shipbuilding when fortunes were amassed and fine homes were built. Some of the streets on the east side of the city were laid out by Bulfinch, the leading architect of Boston. By 1870 Bangor was one of the foremost lumber markets, and shipyards, a mile in extent, built vessels which carried Maine pine to all parts of the world. In the next period the ice-cutter was the characteristic industrial figure, and it has been superseded in turn by the maker of pulp and paper.