| Review | Journal of Gilded Age and Progressive era, 7.1

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| Review | Journal of Gilded Age and Progressive era, 7.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Reviews

A Gilded Age Middle Landscape

RICHARDS, DAVID L. Poland Spring: A Tale of the Gilded Age, 1860–1900. Durham, NH: University of New Hampshire Press, 2005. xii + 313 pp. Introduction, illustrations, notes, select bibliography, index. $24.95 (cloth), ISBN 1-58465-481-3; $19.95 (paper), ISBN 1-58465-482-1.

At the height of its popularity in the 1890s, Poland Spring was many things to many people: a Gilded Age resort, a leisure playground, an escape from urban stresses, a bulwark against modernity, a source of healing spring water, and even a nationally marketed commodity. Today, it is simply the last—one of many bottled water brands available on a crowded supermarket shelf. Poland Spring started, however, in the 1790s as a boarding house (that only incidentally had good water) catering to farmers traveling to market across rural Maine by wagon. What transformed it was the realization by its owners that people might want to stay on the property while taking in the waters. By the 1880s it had grown into a spa and resort, reachable by train and steamship, that offered all the latest amenities as well as healing waters. All this is thoroughly explored in David L. Richards' Poland Spring, a laudable first book that in large part succeeds on most of the many levels it attempts.

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