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Wiscasset and Damariscotta, a bit farther along Route 1 to the northeast, are the economic and social centers of Lincoln County, hubs for the many small towns along the harbors, inlets, and islands that reach out to sea from Route 1.
Wiscasset Downtown
 Once an important shipbuilding center, Wiscasset now bills itself as "the prettiest village in Maine," and can make an argument for its claim with block after block of beautiful old sea captains' homes overlooking the tidal Sheepscot River. It is a well known tourist destination noted for early American architecture.
Main Street in Wiscasset is lined with art galleries, antique shops and restaurants. On your way north, just before you cross the bridge you'll pass a local icon, Red's Eats, home of one of Maine's most popular lobster rolls, said to have an entire lobster's worth of meat in each roll.
The downtown includes the defunct Maine Yankee power plant, the state's sole nuclear facility. The towns immediately inland - Alna, Dresden, and Whitefield are rural, riverside communities of gently rolling countryside. The Wiscasset population is just under 4,000 year-round residents.
 Damariscotta & Newcastle Living
Damariscotta, like Wiscasset, is also defined by a river. It even takes its name from the sleepy waterway that loops south from Damariscotta Lake through the Great Salt Bay and out to sea.
The community has many handsome old homes and a postcard-pretty downtown, lined with red-brick shops overlooking the town landing. Damariscotta and the coastal villages of Pemaquid, Christmas Cove, New Harbor, and Round Pond to its south, have increasingly become a haven for retirees, as well as longtime summercaters.
Downtown Damariscotta is a vibrant mix of unique shops, community services, restaurants, the Lincoln Theatre, farmers’ markets, and artists’ galleries. The village also servers as the gateway to the Pemaquid Region. The Pemaquid Point Lighthouse featured on the Maine State Quarter, the colonial restoration at Fort William Henry, and provides access to the Atlantic Coast and Monhegan Island.
With a populuation of less than 2,000, the village of Newcastle is located on the western shore of the Damariscotta River. Area residents share a strong sense of community and are viscerally connected to the natural habitat that surrounds them.
South Bristol
A fishing and resort area, South Bristol includes the villages of Walpole and Christmas Cove, the latter at Rutherford Island. The town has three nature preserves.
In the 1800s, the are was known for brickmaking and ice harvesting. Brickyards along the Damariscotta River supplied many of the bricks used to build Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood. The ice business faded with the advent of refrigeration, but the Thompson Ice House, established in 1826, is now preserved as the Thompson Ice Harvesting Museum. Shipbuilding has remained important, with schooners, fishing trawlers, lobster boats and yachts constructed at the town.
Other industries in South Bristol are fishing, lobstering, clamming, aquaculture and tourism.
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