Rockland

Town and administrative headquarters of Knox County, south-central Maine; population (1990) 8,000. It is situated on the west shore of Penobscot Bay, 113 km/70 mi northeast of Portland. Originally part of Thomaston, it was an early limestone quarrying and shipbuilding centre. The clipper ship Red Jacket was built here in 1854. Now a commercial centre for the Penobscot Bay region, Rockland has significant summer tourism and an annual Seafoods Festival.

It is the birthplace of poet Edna St Vincent Millay and the site of the Farnsworth Memorial Library and Art Museum, noted for its collection of paintings by Andrew Wyeth and his family.

Rockland

Town in Plymouth County, southeast Massachusetts, 31 km/19 mi southeast of Boston; population (1998 est) 17,500. A suburb of Boston, Rockland has some light manufacturing, including fibreglass boats, shoes, and sheet metal. It was incorporated in 1874.

No community developed here until the 1730s, despite a land grant dating from 1645, because of the unrest that led to King Philip's War (1675). In the Civil War, the shoe industry was said to have shod half the Union army, but most factories closed in the Depression of the 1930s.

South Weymouth Naval Air Station lies to the north. There are seven entries on the national register of historic places.