Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
A town of 5,964, established in 1736.
New Gloucester gives you more for your money than most places: a typical home costs about $433K, 4.7 years of the Portland metro’s $92K median household income. It grades A overall, 13th of 142 graded towns in Maine. On the plus side, it is healthier than 81% of U.S. towns. 18% of the land in New Gloucester is conserved, where Maine’s towns sit at 4.7% and U.S. towns at 4.3%. On hazard risk, just 19 of Maine’s 285 towns do better. New Gloucester is home to Unity Environmental University.
Where New Gloucester beats most towns.
Shaker Village is a National Historic Landmark, the National Register’s top tier.
Census counts: 1,358 in 1790, a low of 1,162 in 1900, 5,676 in 2020. The archive holds 12 old photos and papers going back to 1811 and 4 maps from 1894 on.
4 places on the National Register of Historic Places.
Each subject compared with towns across the country (schools within Maine), ordered by how far New Gloucester is from typical.
How TownRatings grades towns →
Who provides power, water and the rest in New Gloucester, and how to reach them.
EPA SDWIS (Oct 9, 2026) · HIFLD + EIA-861 2025 · Census 2020 ZCTAs · NCES 2024–25 · registration: vote.gov, updated Aug 3, 2026.
Ordered by what stands out in New Gloucester.
New Gloucester gets more snow than nearly all U.S. towns and has less tooth loss than most of Maine.
33 miles of trail in 31 parks and preserves. Snows Hill Woodlot, at 649 acres with 1.3 miles of trail, is the biggest park or preserve.
| Biggest places to walk | Trails | Acres |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Talking Brook Public Land | 2.9 mi | 169 |
| 2. Intervale Preserve | 1.6 mi | 328 |
| 3. Snows Hill Woodlot | 1.3 mi | 649 |
Trails & parks © OpenStreetMap contributors · Conserved land: USGS PAD-US
Its public schools are run by RSU 15/MSAD 15. Two of its 5 schools are below, each with why it’s listed.
| School | Level | Students | Letter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Burchard A Dunn SchoolLargest public elementary schoolGrades PK–4 | Grades PK–4 | 350 | B− |
| Royal Academy Education Inc. PrivateLargest high schoolGrades K–12 | Grades K–12 | 54 | – |
NCES · EDFacts · graded within ME on state tests and graduation
Its widest gap with Maine is tooth loss: 8.8% of those 65+ have lost all their teeth, against 14.8% statewide.
19% of New Gloucester adults binge drink, above both the Maine town median (15%) and the median of U.S. towns (16%). 28% of adults have obesity in New Gloucester. New Gloucester beats the Maine average on 14 of 32 CDC measures and trails it on 2.
| New Gloucester | Maine towns | U.S. towns | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Binge drink (CDC PLACES) | 19% | 15% | 16% |
| Obesity (CDC PLACES) | 28% | 33% | 35% |
| Get no exercise (CDC PLACES) | 17% | 23% | 25% |
| Diabetes (CDC PLACES) | 8.7% | 11% | 12% |
| What stands out | New Gloucester | ME |
|---|---|---|
| Fewer older adults who have lost all their teeth | 8.8% | 14.8% |
| Fewer adults with heart disease | 5.6% | 7.6% |
| More binge drinkers | 18.7% | 15.5% |
CDC PLACES 2025 · modeled estimates for adults · CMS · HRSA
Expected storm and flood damage is lower than in 82% of U.S. communities.
FEMA National Risk Index · OpenFEMA
Most working residents leave New Gloucester for work: only 8% work in town. New Gloucester’s median household income is $109,000. The top destinations are Portland (17%), Lewiston (7%) and South Portland (6%).
| New Gloucester | Maine towns | U.S. towns | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median household income | $109,000 | $78,000 | $80,000 |
| Average trip to work | 27 minutes | 25 minutes | 25 minutes |
| Working residents who work in town | 8.2% | 12% | 8% |
Census LEHD 2023 · ACS
The Poland weather station, 5 miles away, records that 80 inches of snow fall in a normal winter, more than in 95% of U.S. towns. July afternoons average 79.8°: cooler than most of the country, but hotter than 87% of Maine places with climate records; January nights average 10.9°.
New Gloucester has cold, snowy winters and pleasant summers, with plenty of rain. The July high in New Gloucester is 80°F.
| New Gloucester | Maine towns | U.S. towns | |
|---|---|---|---|
| July high | 80°F | 79°F | 85°F |
| January low | 11°F | 10°F | 22°F |
NOAA U.S. Climate Normals, 1991–2020
People 65 and older are 15% of residents (22% statewide); children under 18 are 24% of residents (18% statewide). Only 7 of the 143 Maine towns we compare have a higher share of children under 18 than New Gloucester. New Gloucester has grown 4.4% since 2020, to 5,964 residents in the Census Bureau’s 2025 estimate.
| New Gloucester | Maine towns | U.S. towns | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 18 | 24% | 18% | 22% |
| Aged 65 or older | 15% | 22% | 18% |
| Median age | 40.1 years | 45 years | 40.5 years |
46% women, 54% men
That’s an even split within the survey’s margin of ±5.3 points. Across Maine, 50.7% of residents are women.
| New Gloucester | ME | U.S. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 10 | 9.2% | 9.5% | 11.6% |
| 10 to 17 | 15% | 8.5% | 10.3% |
| 18 to 24 | 6.5% | 8% | 9.1% |
| 25 to 34 | 11.5% | 12% | 13.7% |
| 35 to 44 | 15.2% | 12.2% | 13.2% |
| 45 to 54 | 10.1% | 12.2% | 12.2% |
| 55 to 64 | 17.1% | 15.1% | 12.7% |
| 65 to 74 | 11.8% | 13.4% | 10.2% |
| 75 and older | 3.6% | 8.9% | 7% |
| No diploma | 3.5% | 5.2% | 10.4% |
| High school | 33.9% | 30.1% | 26% |
| Some college | 21.3% | 18.1% | 19.1% |
| Associate’s | 10.6% | 10.4% | 8.8% |
| Bachelor’s | 20% | 22.5% | 21.6% |
| Graduate | 10.6% | 13.7% | 14.1% |
Census population estimates, 2025 · U.S. Census Bureau · ACS 2020-2024 5-year estimates
The typical New Gloucester home is worth about $433,000, up 1.9% in a year, 5% above the Maine typical home.
| New Gloucester | Maine towns | U.S. towns | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Households that own their home | 83% | 81% | 73% |
| Median rent | $1,150 a month | $1,106 a month | $1,185 a month |
Zillow Home Value Index · Redfin Data Center
Museums, parks, gardens and other places to visit around New Gloucester. Close and well known come first.
24 mi LighthousePortland Head Light29 mi Ancient sitePopham Colony
21 mi LandmarkFort Gorges
21 mi MuseumMaine Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum
21 mi MuseumPortland Museum of Art28 mi LandmarkSpirit Pond runestonesPortland Head Light: Aniarku, CC BY-SA 3.0 · Fort Gorges: Dirk Ingo Franke, CC BY 3.0 · Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum: No machine-readable author provided. Gwernol assumed (based on copyright claims), CC BY-SA 3.0 · Portland Museum of Art: John Phelan, CC BY 3.0
5 within 15 miles of the center of New Gloucester
About 3 of every 100 New Gloucester residents are enrolled in college, against 6 across Maine.
4 places in New Gloucester on the National Register of Historic Places.
7 notable people were born in New Gloucester.
Town in Maine, United States
New Gloucester (glaw-sterr) is a town in Cumberland County, Maine, United States. New Gloucester is included in the Lewiston-Auburn, Maine metropolitan New England City and Town Area. It is home to the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village, the last active Shaker village in the U.S. The town's population was 5,676 at the 2020 census. New Gloucester is part of Maine's Portland-South Portland-Biddeford metropolitan area.
From Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 · facts via Wikidata (CC0)
6 towns share a border with New Gloucester.
Durham next door grades higher for schools (A to New Gloucester’s B−) and lower for cost of living (C to B).
| Town | ME rank | Overall | Cost | Safety | Schools | Health |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Gloucester | #13 | A | B | — | B− | A− |
| Poland | #118 | C− | C | — | C− | B |
| Gray | #60 | B | C | — | B− | A |
| Raymond | #5 | A | B+ | — | B | A |
| Pownal | — | — | C+ | — | A | A− |
| Auburn | #126 | D | C− | C | C+ | C+ |
| Durham | #50 | B | C | — | A | B+ |
Pownal has fewer than 2,500 residents, so it gets subject grades but no overall grade. New Gloucester, Poland, Gray, Raymond, Pownal and Durham report no FBI crime data of their own. Compare New Gloucester with a neighbor →
Short answers, built from the data on this page.
By most measures, yes. New Gloucester grades A overall, better than 85% of U.S. towns and #13 of 142 in Maine. It grades A− for health and B− for schools.
Cost of living, which also weighs rents, property taxes and how many households pay 30% or more of their income for housing, grades B.
7 notable people were born here, including Sara Plummer Lemmon and Samuel C. Fessenden.
