Auburn City

Auburn City Hall is located at 60 Court Street, Auburn, ME 04210; phone: 207-333-6600.

Auburn lies along the Androscoggin River opposite Lewiston and, together, form the Lewiston-Auburn Metropolitan Statistical Area.

First settled about 1786, Auburn was incorporated in 1842.

Beginnings [1]

Auburn's name supposedly was take from the Auburn of Oliver Goldsmith's poem, The Deserted Village. The city lays claim to being the home of the shoe industry in Maine because it was still a part of the Town of Minot when the Minot Shoe Company was incorporated in 1835, in what later became West Auburn. Shoe manufacturing in the present city was begun a year later by two brothers, Martin and Moses Crafts. All shoe work was done by hand until about 1850. By 1865 there were 21 shoe factories in Auburn.

1. Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration, State of Maine Development Commission, Maine: A Guide 'Down East,' 1937, American Guide Series, Riverside Press, Cambridge MA; Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston