Once a booming mill village, the Head Tide Historic District is now best represented by fourteen eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century houses. Of these fourteen, six were present at statehood, including the pictured Plummer House. Named after the furthest point upstream where a river is affected by tides, the district is situated on either side of the Sheepscot River and surrounded by hills. Silvester Gardiner, one of the Kennebec Proprietors, obtained two large tracts of land near Head Tide around 1761 and within a year he began selling off parcels in what was then known Pownalborough. By the early nineteenth century, having been renamed for the Native American word for alder, Alna had a concentration of mills at Head Tide with six waterwheels: two for sawmills, two for grist mills, one for a planning mill, and one for a cloth finishing mill. Terraces were cut into the side of a hill behind the finishing mill for drying cloth after it was dyed. The district is notable for its fine collection of well-preserved Georgian- and Federal-style homes, as well as a school, church, and several stores or warehouses clustered in a compact and picturesque village setting.
Year Listed: 1974
For more information: https://npgallery.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/74000320.pdf