Rays Store Prospect Harbor, Me. 2.

LB2010.8.117222

117222

[included in the exhibit "Hancock County Through Eastern's Eye"] LB2010.8.117222 Rays Store, Prospect Harbor, ME. 2. This building, opened as a general store in 1902, stands at the intersection of Prospect Harbor's Main Street (Route 186) and the Pond Road (Route 195), which runs north between the store and the former John Hutchings home on the left. While stores to the north and south also served the village, this business as run by Leonard and Bessie Williams Ray was the principal grocery, furniture, and variety store in the center of the village throughout the first half of the 1900s. The Rays also owned considerable property in the region, including the Dorcas Allen cottage at the Sands. After her husband's death in 1940, Bessie Ray continued selling food and general merchandise, including stationery and drugs, holding forth with local lore at her desk in an alcove for some twenty more years. Though the storefront windows and porch are removed, the building has remained much the same. Since the 1990s it has had a second career providing food in Prospect Harbor as a take-out delicatessen and sandwich shop opposite the village's Dorcas Library. Credit: Allen Workman and Miriam Colwell of the Gouldsboro Historical Society