Landscape Information
Roughly four miles from Bethel Hill Village, Methodists and Baptists with limited town funding established a meeting house and laid out its contiguous two-acre common in 1816, one of the earliest public green spaces in Maine. The location was the town’s geographic center, its historic name Middle Intervale referring to a tract of low ground that was enriched by the annual overflowing of the Sunday River.
The Common was graded and leveled for use as a training ground for local militia. Composed of rough turf and a simple gravel drive, this common is unusual in that it was never embellished with trees, additional paths, ornamental fountains, or other site furnishings, leaving its appearance essentially unchanged since 1816. The meeting house was remodeled in 1825 and again in 1857 to its current Greek Revival style. It was vacated in the early 20th-century and purchased in 1978 by the Middle Intervale Meeting House Society, which preserved and restored it as Bethel’s oldest surviving religious structure. The Center Meeting House and Common were listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1998.
