City Central Downtown Rockland is only a few minutes north by car on Route 73, but entering the busy downtown may well feel like emerging from the 19th century directly into the 21st. Places like St. George can remain so placid because places like Rockland are full of shops, restaurants, banks, and other essentials of modern life. Rockland also has a boisterous lobster festival Aug. 1-5, the largest fleet of windjammers on the coast, and two distinctive museums. The Shore Village Museum came along just at the right time - as the Coast Guard was beginning to automate America's historic lighthouses. Starting in 1968, the museum began acquiring lighthouse and Coast Guard artifacts and now displays more of these materials than any institution in the country.
Foghorns bleat, bells clang, and lights flash.
We call them the jewels of the collection,'' quips curator Robert Davis. Check the upstairs shop for a huge selection of lighthouse books and postcards. Already considered one of the nation's finer small museums, the Farnsworth expanded dramatically in 1998 by opening the Center for the Wyeth Family, repository for Andrew and Betsy Wyeth's personal collection of family art and archival materials. The National Gallery of American Art in Washington was the other strong contender for the materials, but as Andrew Wyeth once said, his Maine paintings look better in Maine, where the light has a quality all its own.