to
Update
is a city in and the county seat of Androscoggin County, Maine, United States. It is one of two principal cities of and included in the Lewiston-Auburn, Maine Metropolitan New England City and Town Area and the Lewiston-Auburn, Maine Metropolitan Statistical Area (which is part of the Portland-Lewiston-South Portland, Maine Combined Statistical Area). Auburn is across the Androscoggin River from Lewiston. The population was 23,690 at the 2000 census.
The area was originally part of the Pejepscot Purchase, land bought in 1714 by a consortium from Boston and Portsmouth following the Treaty of Portsmouth, which brought peace between the Abenaki Indians and English settlements. But in 1736, the Massachusetts General Court granted a large section of the land to veterans of the 1690 Battle of Quebec. Conflicting claims led to prolonged litigation. Consequently, settlement was delayed until after the French and Indian Wars.
It was first settled in 1786 as part of Minot, which was incorporated in 1802. Auburn would be set off and incorporated on February 24, 1842. The name was apparently inspired by Auburn, a place featured in the 1770 poem
by Oliver Goldsmith. Originally part of Cumberland County, the town became county seat of Androscoggin County at its creation in 1854. By annexing land from towns around it, including part of Poland in 1852, Minot in 1873 and all of Danville (first called Pejepscot) in 1867, Auburn grew geographically into one of Maine's largest municipalities. Incorporated a city in 1868, Auburn in 1917 would be the first city in the state to adopt a council-manager form of government.
Farms supplied grain and produce. But with construction of the bridge to Lewiston in 1823, and especially after arrival of the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad from Portland in January 1848, the community developed into a mill town. Mills were built to operate by water power from falls on the Androscoggin and Little Androscoggin rivers. In 1835, the factory system of shoe manufacture originated at Auburn. Other firms manufactured cotton and woolen textiles, carriages, iron goods, bricks and furniture. The city's population in 1860 was only about 4,000 but by 1890 it was about 12,000, when its shoe factories attracted many French Canadian immigrants, many of whom arrived by train from Quebec. Steady population growth continued to about 1960 when the population was about 24,500. Auburn and Lewiston are known as the Twin Cities.