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is a town in and the county seat of Lincoln County, Maine, United States, in the Mid Coast region of the state. The population was 3,603 at the 2000 census. Home to the Chewonki Foundation, Wiscasset is a popular tourist destination noted for its early architecture.
In 1605, Samuel de Champlain is said to have landed here and exchanged gifts with the Indians. Situated on the tidal Sheepscot River, Wiscasset was first settled in 1663. The community was abandoned during the French and Indian Wars, and then resettled around 1730. In 1760, it was incorporated as Pownalborough after Colonial Governor Thomas Pownall. In 1802, it resumed its original Abenaki name, Wiscasset, which means "coming out from the harbor but you don't see where."
The seaport became a center for shipbuilding, fishing and lumber. In 1808, Fort Edgecomb was built on the opposite bank of the Sheepscot to protect the town harbor. Wiscasset's prosperity left behind fine early architecture, particularly in the Federal style when the seaport was important in privateering. Two dwellings of the period, Castle Tucker and the Nickels-Sortwell House, are now museums operated by Historic New England. Until recently, another tourist attraction was two ship hulks near the U.S. 1 bridge—the four-masted cargo schooners
. Bought at auction for $600 each by entrepreneur Frank W. Winter of Auburn, they were brought to Wiscasset in 1932, then abandoned after his premature demise. Over the next 66 years, the weathered vessels would become possibly the most photographed objects in Maine. In 1998, after a violent storm took out the final masts, the rotted remains were removed from the Sheepscot River by the town. From 1972 until 1996, Wiscasset was home to Maine Yankee, a pressurized water reactor on Bailey Point, and the only nuclear power plant in the state. The Maine Yankee nuclear power plant has been decommissioned and is inoperative.
Wiscasset was the seaport terminal and standard gauge interchange of the 2-foot gauge Wiscasset, Waterville and Farmington Railway. Construction began in Wiscasset in 1894. Train service began in 1895 as the Wiscasset and Quebec Railroad. By 1913, the railroad operated daily freight and passenger service 43.5 miles north to Albion with an 11-mile freight branch from Weeks Mills to North Vassalboro. Passengers and freight increasingly used highway transportation after World War I. Frank Winter bought the railroad about 1930 to move lumber from Branch Mills to his schooners mentioned in the preceding paragraph. During the early 1930s the early morning train from Albion to Wiscasset and the afternoon train back to Albion carried the last 2-foot gauge railway post office (RPO) in the United States. A derailment of the morning train in Whitefield on June 15, 1933, terminated railroad operations before the schooners could be loaded with lumber for shipment to larger coastal cities. Most of the railroad equipment was converted to scrap metal prior to World War II.