ROCKLAND

city, seat (1860) of Knox county, southern Maine, U.S., on the western shore of Penobscot Bay 81 miles (130 km) northeast of Portland. The site, settled about 1719, was originally part of Thomaston; it was separately incorporated in 1848 as the town of East Thomaston and was renamed Rockland in 1850 for the local limestone quarries. Its early development was based on lime production and shipbuilding (the famed clipper ship Red Jacket was built there in 1854). The city is now the commercial hub of the Penobscot Bay region with a significant summer tourist trade. There is some commercial fishing and light industry (cement production, boatbuilding, and welding). Rockland's harbour, one of the finest on the Maine coast, is a major landing and distribution point for lobsters, which form the basis for the city's annual Maine Lobster Festival (August). Windjammer cruises are available to tourists in the summer. The poet Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland in 1892. The city's William A. Farnsworth Art Museum houses a collection of paintings by Andrew Wyeth and his family, and the adjacent Farnsworth Homestead is an example of a 19th-century Greek Revival mansion. Thomaston, immediately southwest, retains a number of elegant old homes that attest to its colonial mercantile past, including Montpelier, a reconstruction of General Henry Knox's mansion that is maintained as a state memorial museum. A state ferry service operates from Rockland to the offshore yachting-resort islands of Vinalhaven, North Haven, and Matinicus. Inc. city, 1854. Pop. (1990) 7,972; (1996 est.) 7,905. county, southeastern New York state, U.S., consisting of a hilly region bordered by the Hudson River to the east and New Jersey to the southwest. Sandstone bluffs known as the Palisades border the Hudson where it narrows below the Tappan Zee area of the river. Among the other waterways are the Mahwah River, Rockland and DeForest lakes, and Lake Sebago. Harriman State Park, located in the northwestern section of the county, is the second largest state park in New York; several other state parks line the shore of the Hudson. Oak and hickory are the dominant forest types. Algonquian-speaking Indians, such as the Wappinger, once hunted in the region. The Stony Point Battlefield commemorates a battle (July 16, 1779) fought during the U.S. War of Independence. The county was established in 1798. The 6-mile (9.7-km) Tappan Zee bridge (completed 1956) across the Hudson links Rockland and Westchester counties. The principal communities are Spring Valley, West Haverstraw, Pearl River, Suffern, Nyack, and New City, which is the county seat. The main economic activities are services (health and business), manufacturing (drugs and other chemicals), and retail trade. Rockland has the smallest area of any county in the state outside New York City. Area 174 square miles (451 square km). Pop. (1990) 265,475; (1996 est.) 278,136.