Founding year: Wikipedia. First post office: 1800.The full story ↓
History grade
What drives Buckfield’s History grade
On its age, its old homes and the National Register, Buckfield is more historic than 88% of U.S. towns. All 3 inputs are above most U.S. towns; its share of homes from before 1940 ranks highest and its National Register listings lowest.
A
HistoryA character grade: shown, never part of Buckfield’s overall grade.
Maine towns list more on the Register than most of the country (a typical Maine town has 15.9 per 10,000 residents, the U.S. 2.4), so Buckfield’s 20.8 sits near the middle of its state (60% of Maine towns have fewer) while its 5 listings outnumber those of 70% of U.S. towns.
How sure. Graded on any two of the three inputs instead, the letter would range from A− to A. The pre-1940 share is a Census survey estimate (±10.0 points). Two sources give 1776.
Founding year: Wikipedia (other dates in Quick answers). Homes: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register: National Park Service, May 2026 list; each listing counted once (boundary changes and added documentation belong to their listing), and a historic district counts its contributing buildings. How TownRatings grades history →
What stands out about Buckfield’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Lost half of its people between 1860 and 1950, then more than doubled.
23 censuses, 1800–2020.
U.S. Census Bureau decennial counts, from the census table on Buckfield’s Wikipedia page.
Every building
Buckfield, building by building, 1894–1912
Fire insurance maps drew every building, what it was made of and what it was used for, so insurers could price the risk of fire. Pick a year, then a sheet.
1894Sheet 1 of 1
Edition
Sheets
BrickWoodStone
Sanborn Map Company, via the Library of Congress. Editions published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
It was first settled in 1776 by Benjamin Spaulding from Chelmsford, Massachusetts, a fur trapper. Abijah Buck and Thomas Allen settled in the area in spring of 1777 with their families. In 1785, the inhabitants procured a survey of the town and purchased it from Massachusetts for 2 shillings per acre. Originally called Bucktown Plantation (or Plantation No. 5), in 1793 the Massachusetts General Court incorporated it as Buckfield, named for Abijah Buck.
Passages that mention Buckfield, cut from the printed page as they were published.
A history of Buckfield, Oxford County, Maine, from the earliest explorations to the close of the year 19001915 · page 70Read the page →
Read the text
Buckfield, October the 6 A. D. 1800. At a legal meeting of the proprietors of the town of Buckfield at the school house between Thomas Allen and Abijah Buck.
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
A history of Buckfield, Oxford County, Maine, from the earliest explorations to the close of the year 19001915 · page 111Read the page →
Read the text
vember 1788, they purchased o£ the committee for the sale of Eastern Lands, a tract of land containing about 20,033 acres, which has since been incorporated by the name of Buckfield and for which they paid a full consideration. That since the said purchase, a new survey of the town of Hebron has been made, by which the southerly part of the said town of Buckfield has been encroached upon to the amount of twenty-six hundred acres.
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Timeline
Buckfield, 1776 to 2010
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
In 1776, according to Wikipedia’s history of the town. Buckfield’s post office opened in 1800, and the census of 1800 counted 1,002 people here.
How does Buckfield rank for history?
Buckfield is more historic than 88% of U.S. towns. The History grade combines the town’s founding era, the share of homes built before 1940 and its National Register listings. It’s a character grade, so it isn’t part of the overall grade. How it works.
What is on the National Register in Buckfield?
5 listings: 4 buildings, among them the Union Church (listed 1980, the first), and 1 structure.
How old are the homes in Buckfield?
30% of Buckfield’s homes were built before 1940 (Census estimate, ±10.0 points), against a typical 19% for a Maine town; the median home was built in 1983.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).
From Wikimedia Commons (3), Wikidata (2), the National Register of Historic Places (5), Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikipedia for famous people, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System, Sanborn fire insurance maps (Library of Congress) and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
2014
2014
