Kings Highway in the Kennebunks has changed a lot since it was first established in 1653.

Massachusetts Commissioners could only get their horse carts as far north as Wells to get submission from the people of the Provence of Maine. After inhabitants of Wells, Cape Porpoise, and Saco submitted, the commissioners ordered that they “make sufficient highways within their towns from house to house, and clear and fit for foot and cart, before the next county court, under the penalty of ten pounds for every town’s defect in this particular.”

The first section of this early road that ran north from Kittery through what is today the Kennebunks, was laid out along the shore in 1653 and called the “Kennebunk Road by the Sea,” It was staked out to a definite width, but nothing was done to improve it as a highway. Our King’s Highway consisted of nothing more than two cart wheel ruts with a horse path in the middle.

A complaint was filed against the town of Cape Porpoise in 1660 and we were ordered to build a new and better road in 1681. We complied with this order, only so far as to discontinue or neglect the old road, without ever finishing a new one.

The stretch of Kings Highway that runs along Goose Rocks Beach was still pretty rough two centuries later when Francis Dow photographed it. The Gale of 1898 reshaped Goose Rocks Beach up to Kings Highway and took another toll on the old road. The ferry over the rivers that connected King’s Highway from town to town ran sporatically.

Renumbering the addresses on Kings Highway was mandated by the state’s GIS Office, in accordance with its Enhanced 911 service in 2020. The new numbering system may help emergency first responders find your home, but it presents a problem in my records. Clarie Nickerson’s Goose Rocks Beach House Book and John Pinel’s 1600+ record GRB historical database need to be amended with the new addresses.

Does anyone have a cheat sheet containing both old and new Kings Highway Street numbers or want to volunteer to create one?