Guilford, ME

Guilford is a Piscataquis County town on the Piscataquis River, where the 2020 census counted 1,267 residents. Robert Low and Deacon Robert Herring bought several thousand acres from Bowdoin College, and the first families arrived in 1806. Guilford village, Guilford Center, and North Guilford grew around the Piscataquis, Salmon Stream, and the outlet from Davis Pond. That three-part pattern still organizes the town.

Water powered the town's early working life. A dam across the Piscataquis River in 1824 fed sawmills, shingle mills, grist mills, and later woolen manufacturing. A former woolen mill later housed Maine Wood Turnings before that business left town in 2009. The river also shaped Guilford's roads and bridges, with the village developing its own crossing. Today Piscataquis Community Middle School and Piscataquis Community High School serve the area through Maine School Administrative District 4. Guilford's settlement pattern still follows the older logic of interior Maine: homes and businesses gathered where rivers could turn water into power.