Hartland
is a small community on the fringes of the Sebasticook Valley’s wilderness. Located as it is at the outlet to Great Moose Lake, Hartland has long been a destination for sportsmen and recreational travelers in all seasons. The smaller Morrill Pond on the southeastern side of town offers similar attractions.
The lakeshore is attracting a growing community of year-round residents as more and more of the former fire lanes to lakeside camps and cottages are opened up to four-season use. The lake offers an improved and enlarged boat launch on Great Moose Drive for public access to the popular fishing and boating lake. An active lake association maintains water hazard and channel markers and monitors water quality.
The small community has several convenience stores with a vast and varied stock to fill nearly every need as well as a full-service grocery.
Bangor Savings Bank recently opened a new and spacious branch on historic Warren Square bringing full-service banking back to the community.
Community spirit and the support of the town’s largest employer, Irving Tanning Company, helped build a new community center, the Irving Tanning Community Center, attached to the Hartland Consolidated School. A unique partnership was forged with fundraising; state development grants and a bond issue to assist the three communities of Hartland, St. Albans and Palmyra create the Center as a supplement to a previously overcrowded school. The Center functions after school hours as a community-run center of activities for all ages. The school district recently received federal funding to expand the program offerings of the center year-round.
Irving Tanning Company is a worldwide producer of fine leathers for shoes, clothing and furnishings, one of the last such companies in the state. The plant was modernized within the last 10 years with state-of-the-art equipment that reduced production time and eliminated the less-desirable elements of the tanning industry.
In 2002, the new Somerset Middle School is due to open to house students in grades five through eight from the Somerset County communities of SAD 48. A similar school, Sebasticook Middle School, is under construction in Newport to house the same grades from the eastern side of the district. The new school will replace the historic Hartland Junior High School, the former Academy building, that has housed Hartland students since before the Civil War.
The town also is home to the Hartland Christian School.
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