Rarely, if ever, have the lives and intimate connections of a town with its contiguous populations been captured in such biographical charm as in this stunning book. Accentuated with a wealth of photographs from multiple private and public archives, the pages are alive with historical reference.

With its intermittent, mini-bios of the movers and shakers of the 20th century, “this volume,” in the words of State Historian Earle G. Shettleworth Jr, in his forward, writes that this book “captures the spirit of the time and place it represents,” quoting one summer home resident:  “I come here to find myself. It is so easy to get lost in the world.”

There are only two places along the Atlantic Coast of the United States where mountains meet the sea, and both are in Maine, writes author Philip Conkling in the book’s first chapter. There is Mt. Desert Island, and then the Camden, Rockport, Lincolnville stretch of ragged land. (Conkling is the president of the Island Institute, which publishes this newspaper.)

Conkling and his editor, Polly Saltonstall, have artfully divided this vast accumulation of wonderful tidbits and solid history into 14 chapters that gradually bring us into the 21st century. It is the landscape that entrances, gathering in a growing community and its incipient small steps into a technological world, “Ice,” Conkling writes, “was the great creative sculptor of the Camden area landscape…A vast expanse of mile-high glaciers had shouldered wide paths through deepened valleys and rounded the domes of once craggy hills and mountains” such as Megunticook, Battie, Bald, Beech and Ragged.

Camden is beginning to look like a bustling township in the late 19th century photos with its shipyards, lime kilns, foundries, commercial developments, until the devastating fire of 1892. These photos are amazing in that they have been kept at all.

Lime and ice distribution were big industries along with granite and lumber, and it was still, at the turn of the century, the time of the many-masted great schooners, built all along the Maine coast. The first of the many mini-biographies begins here with Holly Bean, the most famous shipbuilder of the age. These short brief lives, presented as sidebars throughout the book, are full of pizzazz-photo and word presentations of dynamic local Mainers. Conkling captures in succinct, yet choice nuggets, the essence of these bright stars of the early Camden Hills communities.

The Knox Woolen Mill played a huge part in the economic life of the tri-town area. Often several members of a family were employees. Committees formed in town to provide recreational winter sports. Tourism was a way off, as yet, but the advent of the automobile would change the economic direction of everything.

There are chapters about summertime, town politics, the era of World War II, hills and mountains, bays and harbors, rivers and lakes and main streets and downtowns

Wealthy residents and summer families built elaborate “cottages,” (more like mini-mansions), bringing big-city style and ideas to the region.

On a chilly February day massive crowds gather to greet First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt who came to town to christen the first coal barge launched by the Camden Shipyard.

There seems to be almost nothing omitted of the interior lives of people and the growth of these towns. Conkling successfully weaves all the stories of residents into a history of the growth over 100 years of what has now become a sophisticated and lively community.

What is so alluring about this book is how it is assembled, the magic of capturing the special sense of a hometown, growing to reflect both small and large changes in the world outside.

The many individuals worked on the process of collecting and archiving of thousands of items used in the book, which began in 2004, are thanked in the last chapter “A final word.”

Reading the dozens of names in this chapter, we are reminded Conkling’s description in the “Epilogue,” of what is important in order to maintain this region’s vitality: “…the tightly interconnected village settings with scores of historic buildings carefully adapted for re-use; and the small-town neighborliness of citizens and shopkeepers that we take for granted that has disappeared from much of the remainder of the country. It’s what residents call community.”