For decades, postcards arrived regularly in mailboxes across the country, mailed for a penny or two and bearing images both extraordinary and mundane.

There were photos of lighthouses perched on rocky cliffs, stately government buildings and popular tourist attractions. But they also showed everyday life, simple moments and scenes captured by photographers who crisscrossed Maine and beyond.

From the turn of the last century to post-World War II, it seemed Americans couldn’t get enough.

“They were one of the first forms of social media and totally took the world by storm,” said Kevin Johnson, curator at the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, which holds a collection of 55,000 glass plate negatives from Belfast postcard company Eastern Illustrating and Publishing Co.

It’s been decades since their heyday, but old postcards can still be found in boxes at flea markets and antique stores across the state — sometimes organized by town, but more often in a jumble. Now, they hold historical value for their reflection of what life in Maine looked like in decades past.

“The old postcards are oftentimes excellent pictorial records of what an old building or house or street scene in a town looked like. These have great historical value in terms of being records of what the building environment was like in Maine 100 years ago or more,” said State Historian Earle Shettleworth, who began collecting postcards as a child and later donated his large collection to the Maine Historic Preservation Commission.

After the Civil War, when the postal service started issuing the first postcards, they became a quick and easy way for people to communicate.

“It revolutionized casual communication. People could send quick notes about what they were doing, not just when they were on vacation,” said Ben Stickney, curator of photography at the Maine State Museum. “The visual record they created is pretty much irreplaceable. It’s a very important and unique record of places in this time.”

In 1916, Gov. Oakley C. Curtis proclaimed April 19 “Post Card Day” and asked all citizens to send a postcard of Maine to someone outside the state with the message, “Come to Maine.”

An estimated 200 billion to 300 billion postcards were produced and mailed worldwide from the 1890s to the 1920s. Modern photochrom-style postcards first appeared in 1939 and dominated the market after World War II, though they are now more often associated with pretty pictures of sunsets and sunrises and bought as souvenirs.

We traced the history, as depicted through postcards, of seven iconic Maine spots, from Madison to Ogunquit.

Lakewood Theater, Madison 

This postcard, printed by the American Art Post Card Co. of Boston, advertises the theater’s status as the “finest Summer Stock Company in America with Broadway Cast.” A handwritten date — April 9, 1909 — is scrawled on the back in pencil.

The Lakewood Theater area was a swampy amusement park at the turn of the 20th century when Herbert L. Swett took over as manager in 1899. Two years later, “The Private Secretary” opened on June 15, marking what is now considered the Lakewood’s birthday.

In 1928, an article in the Boston Evening American proclaimed: “Now let it be known, they do things well at Lakewood. No shoddy productions clutter the stage in the costly birch grove; no half-hearted, uninspired attempts to do something quickly and cheaply. The Lakewood Players have pride in their work.”

Lakewood, designated the state theater of Maine by the Legislature in 1967, is now the longest-running summer theater in the country.

Congress Street and Congress Square Park, Portland

Shettleworth, the state historian, began collecting postcards in the summer of 1955 — when he was 7 — after he picked up a few at an antique shop in Bingham. One of those first postcards was of Portland, where Shettleworth grew up.

“They taught me about the architecture and development of the city,” he said.

Congress Street, the main thoroughfare through the city, first appeared on maps in 1823, a time when commerce was largely centered on the waterfront. After the Great Fire of 1866, the redevelopment of Congress Street centered on commercial structures and established the thoroughfare as an area of civic importance, according to Greater Portland Landmarks.

The postcard of Congress Street shows the Hay Building, the iconic building once associated with H.H. Hay & Sons Apothecary. Built in 1826 by Charles Q. Clapp, its distinctive triangle shape earned it the nickname “Portland’s Flatiron.” Architect John Calvin Stevens added the third floor in 1922.

The first building to occupy the area now known as Congress Square Park was a wooden row house constructed in the mid-19th century. Walgreens Drugs, seen in the postcard in front of the Eastland Hotel, was built around 1940. Dunkin’ Donuts took over a portion of the space in 1971, according to Shettleworth.

The City Council wanted to clean up the area and eventually seized the Dunkin’ Donuts building through eminent domain and razed it. In the early 1980s, the city secured a $7.3 million federal grant to convert the former building site into a plaza.

Perkins Cove, Ogunquit

Of all the scenic spots in Ogunquit, perhaps none have appeared on postcards as often as Perkins Cove, where lobster boats and dinghies dot the cove to create a classic coastal Maine backdrop.

The human-made inlet was originally called Fish Cove. It became known as Perkins Cove in the late 1800s, when it was named after one of the earliest seafaring families in the area. By the early 1900s, it was a thriving artist colony.

The cove, a beloved destination for generations of visitors, is now home to shops and galleries, restaurants and charter fishing boats. A footbridge still spans the cove, offering visitors a vantage point to take their own postcard-like photos.

The Pier and Hotel Velvet, Old Orchard Beach 

The pier has been pictured on postcards for more than a century, documenting the many changes to the iconic structure over time. This undated postcard shows the entrance of the pier, as well as nearby amusement rides.

The photos were taken by David Hastings, who purchased Eastern Illustrating and Publishing after moving to Maine in the 1970s. He died in 2019 at the age of 81.

The first version of the pier opened to the public in 1898 and included a casino and ballroom that held as many as 5,000 people. Over the next century, it was damaged by storms and rebuilt several times.

The current 500-foot pier was built in 1980 and is lined with souvenir ships, food stalls and a restaurant with a night club.

The six-story Hotel Velvet, pictured in a 1904 postcard by Detroit Photographic Co., opened for business in 1889. It was then owned by Boston candy manufacturer Herbert L. Hildreth, who was famous for his molasses candy called “Velvet Kisses,” according to the Maine State Museum. The hotel was painted red and yellow to match the candy’s yellow boxes.

The clocktower atop the building originally belonged to the Cleaves House hotel and was moved to the corner of East Grand Avenue and Old Orchard Street when the Hotel Velvet was built.

The Hotel Velvet could accommodate 600 guests. When it opened, the hotel provided plumbing, steam heat, electric lights, an elevator, laundry and a roof promenade.

The hotel was destroyed in an Aug. 15, 1907, fire that burned much of downtown Old Orchard Beach. The Grand Victorian, a building with condos on upper floors and businesses on the ground level, now sits where the Hotel Velvet once stood.

North Bridge, Lewiston and Auburn 

Throughout early postcard history, German printers dominated the market, but by the beginning of World War I, American printers were supplying most of the postcards in the U.S. They saved ink by not printing the edge of the card, leaving a white border, according to the Smithsonian.

This undated postcard of the North Bridge was printed by Empire News of Lewiston.

The North Bridge was first built in 1823 by a group of proprietors who charged tolls for crossing. It cost $1 for a monthly pass for families, 1 cent for a foot passenger, 6 cents for a sled or sleigh, and 10 cents for a wagon. There was even a charge for mules and pigs to cross, according to the Androscoggin Historical Society.

The bridge was rebuilt in 1849 and again in 1896 because of flood damage. As the courthouse clock struck 9 a.m. on Dec. 29, 1896, an alderman used an ax to knock down the bars blocking bridge traffic, The Sun Journal reported. The paper described it at the time as “one of the finest bridges in New England and a monument to the enterprise of our two bustling cities.”

In March 1936, all eyes were on the North Bridge as the Androscoggin River rose to record levels. The floodwaters snapped the South Bridge in half, leaving the North Bridge as the only public connection between the two cities.

“At one o’clock this morning the water was up to the girders on the North Bridge and large cakes of ice were hitting the girders with terrific force, making a sound like an explosion which was clearly audible to the crowds who lined Main Street,” the Lewiston Daily Sun reported on March 20, 1936.

The bridge held and reopened three days later. The first vehicle to cross was the “Number 244” electric street car.

In 1981, the Maine Legislature passed a resolve designating the bridge as the James B. Longley Memorial Bridge. Longley, who served as governor from 1975 to 1978, “left an impressive legacy as the first Independent Governor in the United States in more than half a century,” the resolve read.