Acouple boating on the waters of Cundy’s Harbor, Maine, dock at an ancient gray clapboard shanty on a small wharf. “Watson’s General Store” reads a sign under the cedar-shingled roof. Inside, the worn floors creak comfortably, the windows warp the view as only old glass can, and local lobstermen and lobsterwomen sit around telling stories to one another instead of speaking into cell phones. “We never knew you were here,” the excited visitors tell the man behind the counter. “Well,” says the man with a smile, “we’ve only been here 150 years.” Watson’s General Store hasn’t changed much since the Watson family of fishermen (driven ashore here by a storm) opened it in 1850. That’s what keeps locals coming back and visitors discovering it again and again. “People will drive miles to get fresh lobster out of the ocean,” says Tom Watson, a 50- year-old lobsterman who runs the store with his brother when he’s not checking his traps. They’re the sixth generation of Watsons to sell lobster. “It’s the novelty of seeing people unloading boats, and the lobsters being right there. You don’t get that at the market.”

In many ways, Watson’s store and Cundy’s Harbor capture the essence of mid-coast Maine, a collection of finger peninsulas filled with villages right out of a sea story. The region preserves a way of life lost to much of America, yet it’s no museum piece — it’s a living, thriving place that churns along as regularly as the sea to which it’s intimately bound.

Cundy’s Harbor is just one of the villages that make up Harpswell, a town spanning more than 150 miles of coastline, including a ten-mile peninsula and three big islands — Sebascodegan (Native American for “Great Island”), Orr’s and Bailey — as well as 200 smaller ones. Coves, inlets, beaches, and craggy bluffs paint a backdrop for the fishermen as they unload their crafts; lobster traps sit in messy piles outside Revolutionary War-era homes; the salty wind blows the smell of cooking sea life over rocky, rumpled-bed-cover land.

But human construction here is as impressive as what nature has made. The Cribstone Bridge, built in 1928 with no mortar or cement, resists powerful waters by letting them pass through its honeycomb design. The Old Meeting House in Harpswell Center goes back to 1759, a National Historic Landmark (to say the least) with a 10-foot high pulpit and sounding board and other unique features, like a cemetery in the back that serves as the final resting place of the “witch of Harpswell.” And the Captain’s Watch Bed and Breakfast — one of the standouts among the many fine B&Bs in historic homes here — started life in 1862 as Union Hotel, giving it more rooms than your average B&B, including two that connect to an enclosed cupola with a dramatic 360° view of the harbor.

Fishermen and witches haven’t been Harpswell’s only residents. Indians called this place “Merriconeag,” or “Quick Carrying Place,” because they could easily haul their canoes over the thin peninsula to reach the next bay. A number of writers have also made their home here, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, who based The Pearl of Orr’s Island on her summer spent there; Edna St. Vincent Millay, who summered on Ragged Island; 19th-century young adult author Elijah Kellogg; and memoirist Robert P. Tristram Coffin. Composer Irving Berlin also spent summers here, and the Arctic explorer Admiral Robert E. Peary owned a home on Eagle Island that’s open for tours. Psychoanalyst Carl Jung even gave his first seminar in America, on dreams, at Library Hall on Bailey Island. A 20-minute drive brings you to Bath, a shipbuilding town on the Kennebec River. The past lives and breathes here through the Civil War-era Fort Popham and well-preserved homes from the 1700s and 1800s done in a variety of styles (Cape, Colonial, Georgian, Federal, Greek Revival, and Italianate). The National Trust for Historic Preservation designated downtown — with its narrow tree-lined downtown avenues and old brick buildings filled with shops and restaurants (like Kristina’s Restaurant on High Street) — one of a Dozen Distinctive Destinations in the United States. Even so, this is a working town very much ensconced in the present. The Iron Works shipyard here still builds naval vessels, a fact to which the cranes on the skyline can attest.

The Maine Maritime Museum preserves this heritage, which goes back to the days when massive wooden schooners went up at Percy and Small Shipyard. The Virginia, the first ship built by English-speaking settlers in the New World, launched 12 miles downriver from Bath, and the largest wooden sailing vessel ever built, The Wyoming, originated here in 1909. The museum commissioned a steel sculptural recreation of The Wyoming that towers over the surviving original shipyard buildings.

If Bath offers a visceral way to see the past in action, Wiscasset provides a way to buy it. The town that makes a claim rightful as any for “Maine’s Prettiest Village” sports several antique shops, like American Antiques and Folk Art, as well as art and fine furniture galleries and lots of historic homes. Two of these houses, Castle Tucker, a recreation of a Scottish manor, and Nickels-Sortwell House, a Federal-style masterpiece, have been turned into museums. Another long-time resident of Wiscasset, Red’s Eats, sells one of the most storied lobster rolls in the state from a simple stand set up in front of the tidal Sheepscot River. All the meat from a one-pound lobster, bread, and melted butter or mayo on the side equal heaven.

Through these sites and a well-regulated lobster and fishing industry, the area has managed to keep the old ways relevant without retreating from the present. As Watson himself says of the lobstering tradition he’s pursued since the age of eight, “I don’t know anything else, and I don’t really want to.” His son would agree — Thomas Jr. recently obtained his lobster license and his own boat to harvest the seas on his own. Someday, he or one of his relatives will assume management of the family store.

At times the odds seem stacked against this way of life, but like Watson’s General Store, it endures, even despite encroaching modern life and the whims of nature. Watson recalls a particularly bad hurricane that hit his store in 1978. “The place was jumping up and down,” he says. “It took a lot of damage, but it made it.”