Great Salt Bay Blue Sapphire & Diamond Ring

Great Salt Bay

Blue Sapphire & Diamond Ring

Great Salt Bay is at the end of the tidal estuary of the Damariscotta River which runs past Pemaquid and Boothbay 18 miles inland under the bridge between Newcastle and Damariscotta, Maine. It was along the banks of the river that Native Americans fished millions of oysters from the river.  For thousands of years they piled the shells in the forest and fields above where the bridge is today creating one of the largest shell heaps in the world.

A mysterious ancient artifact called the plummet was found along the river in Damariscotta. Said to be a fish line sinker or a net weight, the bottle cap top of this and most plummets, would preclude its practical use as a fish line weight as the cap is too small to securely hold to a line. Too much work went into the making of the piece to justify its use as a sinker.

Plummets were made in Maine and across America for over a thousand years. Follow this link for a summery speculation by a Maine medium sharing her interpretation of the true uses and purposes for plummets.

Great salt Bay was the site of a gathering of the tribes where hundreds if not thousands gathered for the great spring migration of alewives at Damariscotta Falls.

Our blue sapphire represents the Great Salt Bay. The blue sapphire and one diamond symbolize the plummet, the three graduated diamonds in the east and west wings represent the dual water courses and cascading water coming from Damariscotta Lake into Great Salt Bay. The gold represents this amazingly productive life-giving body of water.