Welcome to the Portland Jewish History Trail, a project of Documenting Maine Jewry (DMJ) and the Maine Jewish Museum. The Trail consists of 28 locations, divided into five distinct trails:
The first four trails (East End & Munjoy Hill, Middle & Fore Street Businesses, Downtown, and Woodfords, Deering & Beyond) are located in neighborhoods that are part of the history of Portland Jews as they moved from the inner city to the suburbs. The fifth trail, Jewish Cemeteries, covers the four Jewish cemeteries in Portland and South Portland.
Each trail is introduced with a brief history that provides context for the stops on that trail, and each stop is accompanied by a brief guide to that location and stories about its inhabitants. The stops on each trail are arranged for ease of navigation, not necessarily in historical sequence. Some organizations relocated over the years and appear twice. For security and privacy reasons, not all trail stops are open to the public; we’ve indicated those that are.
If you’re an intrepid walker or cyclist, the East End & Munjoy Hill, Middle & Fore Street Businesses, and Downtown trails can all be done on foot or by bicycle. Both the Woodfords, Deering & Beyond trail and the Jewish Cemeteries trail are located off the Portland peninsula and are easiest completed by car.
The Portland Jewish History Trail is one of several walking tours that celebrate the history of Portland’s diverse communities. We encourage you to explore the Portland Women’s History Trail, Stepping Out: the Portland, Maine Queer History Trail, the Portland Freedom Trail, the Chinese-American Walking Tour, and the Maine Irish Heritage Trail.
Maine’s reputation as the whitest and oldest state in the nation camouflages the rich diversity of its past and present. The Wabanaki have lived in what is now known as “Maine” since time immemorial. African Americans have been here since the early 18th century. During the 19th and 20th centuries, waves of French Canadians, Irish, Italians, Chinese, Catholics, and Jews settled in Maine. And in the 21st century, immigrants and refugees from Africa, Central America and elsewhere, along with transplants from other parts of the U.S., have all made Maine their home. As we can see, Jewish people are part of Maine’s history and will be part of its future.
Jews live all over the state, but most are concentrated in Southern Maine, and within that, in the city of Portland and the Greater Portland area. The Jewish population of Portland, about 185 folk in 1876, escalated to about 1,600 by 1900. More recent demographics are available for Jews living in Southern Maine, i.e. Cumberland, Sagadahoc, and York counties. These report around 8,350 Jews living in Southern Maine in 2007, which rose to around 12,100 in 2024 – a little more than two percent of the total population of the region.
Now considered one of the hippest towns in the U.S. to live, work, eat and play, Portland celebrates diversity, and its Jewish community is vibrant and thriving. Portland boasts five congregations, a Jewish Community Alliance that supports multiple social programs for all, The Cedars (a Jewish-supported nonprofit senior community), four Jewish cemeteries, the Maine Jewish Film Festival, and the Maine Jewish Museum (which is home to Documenting Maine Jewry). Ask any Jewish Mainer: They remain quintessentially “from Maine” and proud of their roots.
Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) License
Historical photographs are used here with the permission of Documenting Maine Jewry, the Maine Memory Network, Maine Historical Society, and the Portland Public Library Special Collections & Archives and the USM Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine, Special Collections. Any further use of photos from these organizations requires their permission.
Documenting Maine Jewry (www.mainejews.org) is the source of much of the research and most of the biographical information for this project.
A complete list of bibliographical references and sources for each stop will be provided by October 2025 in a References section of the Trail.
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