Biohazard Cleanup Near White Project Bath, ME

Bath is a city in and the county seat of Sagadahoc County, Maine, and it had a population of 8,766 in the 2020 census.

Bath is commonly known as the City of Ships because of the number of sailing ships built in its shipyards, and it is part of the Portland-South Portland-Biddeford metropolitan statistical area.

Abenaki Indians called the area Sagadahoc, meaning mouth of big river, a reference to the Kennebec River, which Samuel de Champlain explored in 1605.

Bath was set off from Georgetown and incorporated as a town on February 17, 1781, named by postmaster Dummer Sewall after Bath in Somerset, England, and it was incorporated as a city on June 14, 1847, and designated county seat in 1854.

Shipbuilding in Bath began in 1743, and since then roughly 5,000 vessels have been launched from the city, which became the nation's fifth-largest seaport by the mid-19th century and was at one point home to more than 200 shipbuilding firms.

The last commercial enterprise to build wooden ships in Bath was the Percy and Small Shipyard, whose schooner Wyoming is considered the largest wooden ship in world history and was acquired for preservation in 1975 by the Maine Maritime Museum.

The Bath Iron Works was founded in 1884 by Thomas W. Hyde and has built hundreds of wooden and steel vessels, mostly warships for the United States Navy, launching one new ship about every 17 days during World War II, and it operates today as a division of General Dynamics.

The Popham Colony was established in 1607 downstream from present-day Bath, and its colonists built the Virginia of Sagadahoc, the first oceangoing vessel constructed by English shipwrights in the New World.

Bath is noted for its Federal, Greek Revival and Italianate architecture, including the 1858 Custom House and Post Office designed by Ammi B. Young, and it holds the Heritage Days Festival annually during the Fourth of July weekend.

A street clock built by the Seth Thomas Clock Company stands at the corner of Front and Centre Streets in Bath, purchased from Boston in 1915 by Fred Cox, owner of Hallet's Drug Store, and restored in 2000.