Scarborough Community Character: Several Villages, One Fast-Growing Maine Town

A Town Older Than It Looks: Incorporated 1658

Scarborough was incorporated on July 14, 1658 by the Massachusetts General Court, at a time when Maine was still part of Massachusetts (it would not become its own state until 1820). The town takes its name from Scarborough, Yorkshire, in England. European settlement traces back further still, to Thomas Cammock's 1631 land patent covering roughly 1,500 acres of what is now Black Point and Prouts Neck, with settlement beginning around 1635 — five years before neighboring Wells was incorporated in 1653, and more than two decades before Scarborough's own incorporation. This is a genuinely old town by New England standards, not a modern beach suburb that grew up around tourism.

Two named figures anchor Scarborough's early and later history. William King, Maine's first governor after statehood in 1820, is counted among Scarborough's notable residents. So is the painter Winslow Homer, whose connection to the town runs much deeper than a passing mention — his working studio still stands at Prouts Neck, covered in its own section below.

Higgins Beach: A Small Village With a Real, Active Calendar

Higgins Beach is a specific, named oceanfront village on Scarborough's coast, between Thunder Cove and the Spurwink River estuary. The land was a saltwater farm inherited by Hiram Higgins in the 1870s before being developed into the beach community that carries his name today; at low tide, the wreck of the three-masted schooner Howard W. Middleton, driven ashore in an August 1897 storm, is still visible. The Portland Press Herald's own 2018 "Maine Places to Love" feature singled out Higgins Beach as Scarborough's most distinctive and desirable enclave.

What makes Higgins Beach genuinely different from a resort development is who runs its community life: the Higgins Beach Association, a volunteer neighborhood group that organizes a real summer calendar — a concert series, craft shows, a July 4th celebration, and weekly summer beach yoga. That is small-village programming built and run by residents, not amenities packaged by a developer or a hotel chain. The Higgins Beach Inn remains the area's known lodging landmark.

Pine Point: Scarborough's Working Fishing Village

At Scarborough's southern end sits Pine Point, a village with a genuinely different character from Higgins Beach: it is tied historically and currently to commercial fishing, anchored by the Pine Point Fisherman's Co-Op and a commercial fishing pier rebuilt in 2011 to serve the local fleet. Pine Point Harbor has its own town dock. It is worth being direct about the geography here: Pine Point Beach is physically the same continuous sand strand that runs into Old Orchard Beach, divided only by a town line rather than any natural break. Old Orchard Beach's boardwalk, pier, and amusement-park scene belong to that neighboring town, not to Scarborough. Pine Point is Scarborough's own, quieter bookend to that same shoreline — working docks and a fishing-village character, not a boardwalk.

Prouts Neck: A Private Summer Colony, and Winslow Homer's Actual Studio

Prouts Neck, a coastal peninsula historically known as Black Point before being renamed for Boston merchant Timothy Prout, is Scarborough's most exclusive and least public village. Today it is a largely built-out, mostly seasonal summer colony with private and gated roads, its own police patrol, and century-old cottages, many designed by architect John Calvin Stevens. The Prouts Neck Country Club, established in 1907, has a residents-only 18-hole golf course and tennis, and the Prouts Neck Yacht Club runs youth sailing and racing. These are real clubs serving a real, largely private community, not general-public amenities.

What sets Prouts Neck apart from any comparable "old money summer colony" elsewhere on this coast is a genuine, verifiable piece of American art history: the painter Winslow Homer lived and worked at his Prouts Neck studio from 1884 until his death there in 1910. The studio, a converted 1884 carriage house adapted by John Calvin Stevens and moved 100 feet for privacy, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965. The Portland Museum of Art acquired the property in 2006, restored it to its Homer-era condition, and reopened it to the public in 2012 as a guided-tour site — visitors book through the museum's downtown Portland location rather than driving to the studio itself. It is a specific, working artist's own house, still standing and still touring, not a general "artist colony" reputation.

A Bigger, Faster-Growing Town Than Its Beach Villages Suggest

Higgins Beach, Pine Point, and Prouts Neck are the villages most visitors picture, but they are not where most of Scarborough's people actually live. The town's larger inland and suburban areas — Blue Point, Dunstan, Eight Corners, North Scarborough, Oak Hill, Pleasant Hill, and West Scarborough — hold the bulk of the year-round population and the town's real economic anchor: Scarborough is the headquarters town of Hannaford supermarkets, a genuine non-tourism employer distinct from the beach-lifestyle story.

That population is also growing quickly. Scarborough counted 22,135 residents at the 2020 Census and a 2025 Census Bureau estimate of 24,547 — roughly 11% growth in five years, making it one of the faster-growing towns in Maine. That trajectory points to a community actively adding new residents rather than a fixed or shrinking one, which matters for anyone weighing whether a town's character is likely to hold steady or keep shifting.

The Downs: A 70-Year Racetrack Becoming Maine's First New-Build Town Center

Scarborough Downs opened as a harness and thoroughbred racing track in 1949-50 and ran live racing for 70 years before its final races on November 28-30, 2020, after which racing operations relocated to the Cumberland Fairgrounds. What is happening on that site now is one of the more dramatic active civic stories on the Maine coast: a 525-acre, master-planned redevelopment known as The Downs, envisioned at full build-out as roughly $615 million in new assessed value and up to 3,000 new jobs, and described as Maine's first-ever from-scratch new-build town center.

The transformation is not a future promise; it is already underway. The site now includes Maine's first Costco, already open, alongside Idexx offices in a planned "Innovation District." A Market Basket supermarket has been announced, and Allagash Brewing has committed to a location in the planned town center's central green. For a town this size, that is a genuinely significant, current shift in what "Scarborough" means as a place to live and shop, not a distant rezoning plan.

Scarborough Marsh: A Defining Conservation Landscape

Bordering these villages is Scarborough Marsh, commonly cited at roughly 3,100 to 3,200 acres and described as the largest contiguous salt marsh in Maine, drained by the Scarborough, Nonesuch, Libby, and Spurwink rivers. It is state-owned and managed as a wildlife management area, with additional acreage still being added by the Scarborough Land Trust and Friends of Scarborough Marsh. Maine Audubon operates the Scarborough Marsh Nature Center on Pine Point Road, offering naturalist-guided canoe tours, a self-guided nature trail, and canoe and kayak rentals during the summer season — genuine, ongoing community-education programming built around the marsh, not a passive scenic backdrop.

The Honest Summary

Scarborough, Maine is not one community; it is several, sharing a town line. Higgins Beach runs its own small, resident-organized calendar of concerts, craft shows, and beach yoga. Pine Point is a working fishing village, not a boardwalk, sharing a sand strand with Old Orchard Beach but sharing none of that town's amusement-park character. Prouts Neck is a private, largely seasonal summer colony built around a genuine National Historic Landmark: Winslow Homer's own working studio. And the larger, faster-growing inland town — up 11% since 2020, and anchored economically by Hannaford's headquarters — is where most residents actually live day to day, now watching a 70-year-old horse track become Maine's first from-scratch town center a short drive away. Anyone weighing a move or purchase here should treat the figures on this page as a starting point and confirm current data directly with the Town of Scarborough or a qualified local professional.