AN EXHIBIT AT THE HEAD TIDE STORE

The Apples in Head Tide exhibit is now open at the Head Tide Store, 45 Head Tide Road, Alna — on view during shop hours (Wednesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.; Sunday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.). These pages are its permanent online companion.

Apples in Head Tide

A multi-panel exhibit on the orchards, growers, railways, and merchants that connected the hillsides of Head Tide to the apple markets of Boston, Portland, and New York. Drawn from the Jewett Store collection and the Town of Alna archives, with material from the WW&F Railway Museum and the USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection, the published writing and talks of Maine apple historian John Bunker, correspondence with UMaine Extension pomologist Dr. Renae Moran, and the conversations, photographs, and other contributions of Joan Gregoire.

Each panel title below is a link. Click a title to open its deep-dive page.

Panel I — The Orchards on the Hill An aerial photograph of Head Tide, c. 1949–1955, and the orchards that once climbed the ridge above the village.

Panel II — The Northern Spy & the USDA Watercolors The apple of pride in the Sheepscot Valley, and the public-domain watercolor archive that documents it.

Panel III — The Railway and the Apple Trade The two-foot WW&F narrow-gauge that carried Head Tide's fruit to Wiscasset and beyond, 1895–1933.

Panel IV — Letters from the Commission Merchants Forty years of correspondence with the firms that sold Head Tide's apples in Boston and Portland — including a familiar name from before it was a supermarket.

Panel V — From Orchard to Market: Packing, Grading, and Shipping Baskets, barrels, crates, and the standards behind a Grade A Northern Spy.

Panel VI — The Head Tide Store: Then and Now The Jewett Store at 45 Head Tide Road in the 1920s and again in 2025 — two generations of Jewetts, the village post office, and a building that endures.

Panel VII — Apples Along the Way: A Living Legacy John Bunker's Out on a Limb Apples, and the unplanned trees still growing along the old railway right of way.