The Summer Playground of the Nation

May 20—August 11, 2023

Saco Museum

371 Main Street Saco, Maine 04072 207-283-3861 sacomuseum.org

England” exhibit expands the museum’s scope to cover quarries in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire, exploring how “New England granite built the nation.”

Open Tuesday–Sunday through October at 62 Beech Hill Cross Road, Mount Desert. Admission by donation. mainegraniteindus try.org, 244-7299.

Artists Run Wild

On the outside it’s a demure 19th-century Maine place of worship. But inside it’s an explosion of mid-century modern art.

In 1842, the founders of the South Solon Meeting House stipulated that “the house [be] opened freely on weekdays, when requested, for conference meetings and for lectures and addresses on all religious, benevolent, moral and scienti c subjects.”

A century later, when the meeting house had fallen into disuse, Mrs. Margaret Day Blake, a student at the nearby Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, sponsored fellowships in the 1950s for over a dozen young professional artists selected by juried national competitions to cover the interior with oor-to-ceiling frescoes—a bold stroke.

Today, in keeping with its founding spirit, the building is always open to the public to visit for a few minutes or a few hours on Meeting House Road in Solon. southsolonmeetinghouse.org, 643-2555.

SHAKE, SHAKE, SHAKE

In the 1970s, Knox resident Barbara Marshall enjoyed chatting on her CB radio and became friends with “a woman from Waterville who asked me what I collected. When I said nothing, she said, ‘You will,’ and gave me my rst two pieces. Now I have over 7,000.” ose pieces make up the Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum, originally in Corinna, but now located at 63 Abbott Hill Road, Dexter, in a former middle school.

Admission is free, and the museum is “open by appointment or chance.” 416-4199.

Dial M For The Museum Of Telephony

If you wish to operate an old-time telephone switchboard, you can learn how at e Telephone Museum at 166 Winkumpaugh Road in Ellsworth. e museum was founded to preserve older technology in order to educate people and inspire new ideas. Current president David ompson, who heads up this almost forty-year-old non-pro t, says, “Some folks stay an hour or two, but some get so fascinated with our equipment they spend the whole day.” Admission is $10 for adults and $5 for children. Open Saturdays, July–September. thetelephonemuseum.org, 667-9491. Be sure to call before you hit the road.

Big Gulp

This summer’s Union Fair (July 26–30)admission includes the Matthews Museum of Maine Heritage, conveniently located in the e late 19th century was a boom time for Maine inventors, including the Stanley twins, Francis and Freelan, who invented the Stanley Steamer. ey may have inspired Alvin Lombard of Waterville’s steam-powered log hauler, whose caterpillar treads allowed logs to be hauled over the iciest roads, re- placing 50 horses and revolutionizing the timber industry. As they needed a wood re and water, they were perfectly suited for the north woods. Of his 83 machines, two are maintained and operational at the Maine Forest and Logging Museum at Leonard’s Mills, 262 Government Road in Bradley, the site of an early pioneer settlement. is living history museum is an authentic reconstruction of a logging and milling community of the 1790s. maineforestandloggingmuseum.org, 974-6278 n

Union Fairgrounds on Common Road in Union. Famous for its 32-foot-high Moxie bottle, the museum houses 10,000 artifacts relating to the history of Maine culture from the 18th century forward, “9,800 of which,” according to museum president George Gross, “are from Maine.” Open Wednesday–Saturday, July–August. matthewsmuseum.org, 563-1544.

Check out our additional museum coverage in “Rainy-Day Weird” from July/August 2013: https://www.portlandmonthly.com/ portmag/2013/07/rainy-day-weird/