One river and many bridges have both separated and connected Brunswick and Topsham throughout history.

“The Androscoggin River runs between Brunswick and Topsham and separates the communities. They’re in different counties, they have different governments, they have different cultures, but they have a long historical connection … the river has separated, but the river has connected,” said local historian Jym St. Pierre, the curator of “The Androscoggin River: Connecting the Land and its People” at the Pejepscot Museum.

It’s one of two new exhibitions that opened this summer at the Pejepscot Museum in Brunswick that explore how the people of Brunswick and Topsham are shaped by the land.

St. Pierre’s work examines the history of the Androscoggin in the Brunswick-Topsham area from its Indigenous people through the modern era. A companion exhibition upstairs curated by historian Candace Kanes discusses the several bridges used to join the two communities over hundreds of years — and the controversies that arose with each project.

The exhibitions come as work continues to replace the main thoroughfare between Brunswick and Topsham, the Frank J. Wood Bridge — a contentious project that was wrapped up in litigation for years.

“I realized that every single bridge has been controversial for one reason or another; where it was located, whether it was a toll bridge and you had to pay to go across it, which town maintained it,” Kanes said.

Kanes’ interest in bridges was sparked two decades ago while serving on the committee that restored the Swinging Bridge, a pedestrian bridge that dates back to 1892. A former Times Record reporter and editor, she used newspaper archives as a way to understand public sentiment around the various bridge projects in the exhibition.

Kanes’ exhibition chronicles the bridges at five sites, four of which still have bridges today. Newspaper clippings recount collapses, floods and tornadoes, and capture disputes about the bridges in real time.

In the main gallery, the Androscoggin River exhibition covers the “waves of people” that have come to the land known as the Pejepscot by the Wabanaki Nations.

“We’re so car-oriented that we tend to think of the Brunswick-Topsham area in terms of getting around along the roads,” St. Pierre said. “But historically, the river was central.”

The river served as a source of food and transportation for Indigenous people. European settlers likely first arrived in the Pejepscot area via the river in the early 1600s. Fort George, or Fort Andross, was built next to the river’s falls and was the site of heavy fighting between settlers and Wabanaki. In the 18th and 19th centuries, shipyards and mills defined commerce along the Androscoggin. At least one slave ship was built in Brunswick, and enslaved people may have also used the Androscoggin as a means to escape captivity. And later, the river was a center of late 19th- and early 20th-century tourism.

The exhibition closes with a call to protect the river, inspired by Rumford native and champion of the Clean Water Act, statesman Edmund Muskie.

The Pejepscot Museum on Park Row is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. The Pejepscot History Center also holds tours at the Skolfield-Whittier House and the Joshua L. Chamberlain Museum. PHC’s annual summer walking tours kicked off in June, with walks hosted by local historians taking place throughout the season.