Dog Boarding & Daycare Near Veazie, Maine

Veazie is the smallest town on this page by population — 1,814 residents at the 2020 census — and one of the smallest by area, at just 3.22 square miles, with a population density around 599 people per square mile. It split off from Bangor in 1853, reportedly after its wealthiest resident, lumber baron and railroad man Samuel Veazie, objected to Bangor's property taxes, and the town still carries his name.

The Penobscot River is Veazie's defining feature, and it changed a lot in the last generation: the Veazie Dam, which once powered the town's sawmills, was removed in 2013 as part of the Penobscot River Restoration Project, specifically to restore Atlantic salmon and shad runs.

Veazie is small enough that it maintains its own schools and police department, but not its own high school — students attend neighboring high schools in Bangor or Orono, which says something about how closely tied the town is to its bigger neighbors.

At about 599 residents per square mile, Veazie is one of the denser towns on this page despite its tiny population — a function of its 3.22-square-mile footprint rather than any large number of households.

The dam's removal was part of a larger project on the Penobscot — the Great Works Dam upstream, between Old Town and Bradley, came out a year earlier, in 2012, as part of the same four-dam restoration effort to reopen the river to migratory fish.

Veazie residents voted in 1996 to build the current Veazie Community School, replacing the John R. Graham School that had served the town since 1924 — one more sign of a small town that still invests in its own local institutions even while sending teenagers to high school in Bangor or Orono.