Casco Bay

Casco Bay is a channel of the Gulf of Maine. Its easternmost approach is Cape Small and its westernmost approach is Two Lights in Cape Elizabeth. The city of Portland sits along its southern edge and the Port of Portland lies within.There are two speculations on the beginning of the name "Casco Bay". Aucocisco is the Abenaki name for the inlet, which signifies 'place of herons' occasionally deciphered as 'muddy'.The Portuguese wayfarer Estêvão Gomes, mapped the Maine drift in 1525 and named the straight "Bahía de Cascos" Bay of Helmets, in view of the state of the bay.The first settlement in Casco Bay was that of Capt. Christopher Levett, an English wayfarer, who assembled a house on House Island in 1623-24. The settlement failed. The primary lasting settlement of the sound was named Casco; in spite of changing names all through history, that settlement remains the biggest city in the Casco Bay district, now called the city of Portland, MaineIt was first detailed in 1700 by Colonel Wolfgang William Römer, an English military architect, that there were "the same number of islands as there are days in the year". The United States Coastal Pilot records 136 islands, prompting the narrows' islands being known as the Calendar Islands in view of the common misconception there are 365 of them. Afterward, Robert M. York, the previous Maine state student of history said there are "minimal in excess of two hundred islands.