McArthur Public Library

Grant funds will support the conservation of the Library's oldest map showing the downtown and mill districts of coastal cities Biddeford and Saco, Maine, which constituted a large textile manufacturing center of New England through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This map, created in 1848 just four years after the first of the major textile manufacturers were built in Biddeford, shows the early street names as well as the early mill complexes on either side of the Saco River, thus serving as a valuable resource for local history. The library will also purchase remote environmental monitoring equipment to facilitate better environmental monitoring for the Special Collections materials.