| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Poland Spring: A Tale of the Gilded Age, 1860–1900. By David L. Richards. (Durham: University of New Hampshire Press, 2005. xii, 313 pp. $45.00, ISBN 1-58465-481-3.)
David L. Richards's book tells us about the promotion of a mountaintop spa in southwestern Maine, near Lewiston, about thirty miles from Portland. Poland Spring was a resort and bottling plant that grew from an inn and farm established in the 1820s. It was the creation of the entrepreneurial Ricker family that, despite the squabbles of many decades, made it into a large complex that became the epitome of a middle-class resort.	1
Richards's thesis contributes to Gilded Age rather than resort history. He affirms that from 1860 to 1900 the Rickers's spa spread modern values to the countryside, transforming a "country farm to a summer city [that] made the resort a metaphor for progress" (p. 1). He divides the book into three parts: The first covers the Rickers and their clients, "the families of prosperous businessmen, manufacturers, merchants, managers, and professionals" (p. 24); the second counters the first by admitting that despite Gilded Age visitors' enthusiasm for modernity, they wanted to get away from modernity and bury themselves in nostalgia; the third explores the expansion of the resort complex that created a seasonal city, including a progressive farm, its grounds, the playing fields, and the Maine State Building (a museum). Richards has told us only half the story of the spa, stopping his narrative abruptly in 1900, presumably because his Gilded Age concludes then.	. . .

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