SamOset Hotel, Rockland, Me

SamOset Hotel, Rockland, Me

A colorized postcard photo: "SamOset Hotel, Rockland, Me." A very large resort hotel with people on the lawns and roads. Hotels Inns Samoset Hotel, Rockland, Maine at Rockland Breakwater, Rockland, Maine The second in the triumvirate of grand New England hotels run by the Ricker Hotel Company was the Samoset, located on the craggy Maine coast at Rockland Breakwater. The Bay Point Hotel, as it was originally called, was built and operated by Francis Cobb II, and opened on July 4, 1889. "This magnificent hostelry is beautifully situated on the highland overlooking the ocean, bay, islands, mountains and hills. It was built with all the modern improvements, and it was the intention it should lack nothing that art could devise, health demand, pleasure or comfort suggest, to make it a home where the most fastidious can abide in luxury, with refined and cultivated companionship of intellectual men and women, where the air and sea and land will lend a witchery always new and ever fascinating. The public and private rooms are large, well lighted, and cheery, and the verandas, overlooking the waves, present superb marine views." (Booklet, The State of Maine in 1893) In 1902, the Bay Point Hotel was sold to the Rickers family, who renovated the hotel and rechristened it the "The Samoset" after the Native American who famously greeted the Pilgrims with the words "Welcome, Welcome, Englishmen" soon after their arrival. Samoset was a sagamore of his tribe, and was visiting chief Massasoit. He spoke in broken English that he had learned from the English fishermen that came to fish off Monhegan Island, located off the coast of southeast Maine. Samoset was described by the Pilgrims as "...a man free in speech, so far as he could express his mind, and of a seemly carriage ... He was a tall straight man, the hair of his head black, long behind, only short before, none on his face at all." "Originally known as the Bay Point Hotel, it seemed more than fitting that, situated as it is, on ground replete with the romance of Colonial times, the reconstructed house should bear a name commemorating some event in the earliest known history of the region; hence the name 'Samoset', that of the friendly Indian sachem of the bay..." (Ricker Hotel Company, 1912) In 1911, the hotel was purchased by the Maine Central Railroad, who also owned the Mt. Kineo House at Moosehead Lake and the Newport House at Bar Harbor. The Ricker Hotel Company continued to oversee the operations of the Samoset, in addition to the Poland Spring hotels and several other properties. "The hotel stands on an eminence seventy-five feet above and one thousand feet back from the shore. Before it stretches beautiful Penobscot Bay, while behind it is the stately Camden Range. It is always cool at the Samoset, and one finds every sort of diversion -- music, dancing, golf, tennis, boating, bathing, driving, riding, and motoring." (Pamphlet, Poland Spring, 1917) "With a bevy of fifty visitors registering on the opening day, June 25th, the Samoset began propitiously what bids fair the be the largest season in the history of the resort. Old visitors were back, and many who had never been here before, tasted for the first time the seashore delights, -- the lovely seaward views, fresh briny air, and sport in a score of forms under the most favorable auspices." As the new century progressed, the Samoset suffered from the same misfortunes as its sister hotels, namely the great economic depression of the 1930's and the ascendance of the automobile and the changes in travel that resulted. In 1941 the Samoset was sold to Adriel Bird of the La Touraine Coffee Company and William Doe of Boulton, Smart Company of Boston. The resort was sold again in 1946 to the Sonnabed Corporation, and after struggling through the 1950's and 1960's, ultimately closed its doors for good in 1969. After several years of neglect, the Samoset was consumed by fire on October 13, 1972.