If you stood on a street corner in Rockland or Camden on a summer day last year you would never guess that population growth is flat in Knox County’s two largest communities.

But the gridlocked traffic in the streets and the elbow-to-elbow people on the sidewalks are a clue to understanding what’s really happening in the county.

At 374 square miles, Knox is the state’s second-smallest county in geographical size. But considered with its neighbors – Lincoln to the south, and Waldo to the north – Knox County looms large as part of the midcoast success story.

Representing the middle third of the state’s coast, the three counties in the past several years have boasted of low unemployment and growing household wages. And with the release of the 2000 census figures, it’s apparent that Knox County is growing in population, keeping pace with its neighbors.

Knox has grown 9 percent since 1990; Waldo and Lincoln counties each grew 10 percent. Farther north along the coast, Hancock County also had 10 percent growth.

Early in the decade, Knox County had the first jobs brought into the state by credit card lender MBNA America. The company, based in Delaware, formed in the early 1980s and less 10 years later was the second-largest credit card lender in the world.

In the summer of 1993, company co-founder Charlie Cawley was visiting Camden and decided to create 75 jobs in one of the town’s dormant mills. Eight years later, the company employs 4,500 in the state, with offices in Aroostook, Franklin, Penobscot, Waldo and Knox counties. Some 400 people now work in the Camden office, 350 in Rockland, and another 600 will work in a new Rockland facility that is scheduled to open this summer.

Knox County’s 9 percent population growth since 1990 – a net gain of 3,308 – has been in the bedroom rural communities around Rockland and Camden.

Topping the list of fastest-growing towns is Cushing, at 34 percent, followed by Hope at 29 percent. Appleton recorded 19 percent growth, and Warren, just a little under 19 percent.

Municipal officials believe the growth in these rural towns is directly related to the lack of growth in Rockland and Camden.

Rockland, the county seat, lost population in the last decade, dropping from 7,972 in 1990 to 7,609 last year. Yet, according to Rodney Lynch, the city’s community development director, on any given weekday there may be 10,000 to 14,000 people in town. At the height of the summer, it may be more like 15,000, he said.

Declining residential population is probably due to several factors.

One is that there are more households with fewer people; in particular, more elderly people, with one or two people in a home.

A second factor is that as the financial lot of families improved in the past decade, many left apartments to build or buy homes in nearby towns, Lynch said.

And perhaps most significant is the fact that Rockland has become a major service center.

“So you have a competition between commercial and residential,” he said. “And commercial is winning.”

What has happened on Route 1 north of the downtown illustrates the point, Lynch said. Several houses have been demolished to make way for a new auto parts store and an information center for the Samoset Resort. A half-dozen more homes are under contract with The Home Depot, which hopes to win permits to build a new store. These houses also will face demolition.

The city’s $25-plus property tax rate also may be an inhibiting factor, Lynch admitted. Despite the relatively high taxes, he said, many younger couples have bought older duplexes in town, converting them to single units.

“We have less land here, too,” Lynch said. Rockland’s geographic size is significantly smaller than neighboring Rockport or nearby Warren, and about 40 percent of the city is difficult to build on because of the presence of wetlands. Though an expensive proposition, expanding sewer lines away from the downtown could spur residential growth, he said.

So while Rockland’s population drops, nearby towns such as Warren and Cushing grow. Cushing grew from 795 in 1980, to 988 in 1990 and 1,322 last year. During the same period, Warren’s population went from 2,566 to 3,192 to 3,794.

Lynch said many of the people who work in Rockland now live in the nearby towns.

In addition to the Rockland connection, Warren Town Manager Grant Watmough believes his town is becoming a bedroom community for those who work in Augusta, at the state prison facilities in Warren and Thomaston, at MBNA in Camden, Rockland or Belfast, and at Bath Iron Works.

The rate of manufactured housing in Warren is higher than in neighboring towns, which Watmough interprets to mean that many first-time homeowners are choosing the town.

In early 1999, Warren residents overwhelmingly approved a moratorium on subdivisions. A reworked subdivision ordinance is a lot stricter, the town manager said. Since the new ordinance, there has been just one subdivision application.

Another Knox County service center, Camden, grew slightly in the 1990s, from 5,161 to 5,254. But Code Enforcement Officer Jeff Nims believes those numbers mask what is really going on in town.

The average house in Camden sells for $269,000, certainly putting a home out of the range of many who work in town.

“We’re seeing property values in the village go up astronomically,” Nims said.

When he began working for the town in 1992, half of the town office employees lived in Camden. Today, just two of 12 live in town.

Yet housing starts are up.

“There is room,” Nims said of the availability of land. “There have been a fair number of housing starts in recent years.”

Between July 1 and March 1, permits for 23 new homes or manufactured homes have been issued. This number does not include the 13 retired-housing units that have been approved for the Quarry Hill development.

In 2000, there were 20 new house permits, and in 1999, there were 32. Earlier in the decade, the numbers had dropped significantly from a mid-1980s peak.

Nims said that many of the homes purchased and built in town in recent years are probably second homes for wealthier retirees. They are not counted in Camden’s census figures.

But the flat growth of permanent residents does concern town officials.

“You want to maintain a good mix,” Nims said. “You want a diverse population. That does concern us.”

Camden and Rockport are the heart of the five-town school districts, which provide education for middle and high school students from the outlying towns of Hope and Appleton, and Lincolnville, just across the Waldo County line. In the past decade, Hope grew from 1,017 to 1,310, while Appleton grew from 1,069 to 1,271.

Families from Camden and Rockport who want to keep their children in the school district and save money at the same time are moving into these towns, observers say.

Francina Pearse moved to Hope in 1963, when the rolling hills were occupied mostly by dairy and chicken farms. Today, just two farms are left, while dozens of Cape Cod houses have sprung up on grassy knolls where cows once grazed.

“There’s a lot of building and a lot of young families,” she said. The town elementary school probably will have to be expanded, Pearse believes.

A veteran of five years on the Board of Selectmen and four-plus years on the school board, Pearse knows what growth means to government.

“The whole town wants the road plowed more,” she said.

Pearse now devotes her civic efforts to the Fire Department. The spreading residential growth may mean another fire station is needed at the other end of town, she said.

Area schools are taking a wait-and-see approach to the population data. In Rockland, SAD 5 Superintendent Donald Kanicki is projecting larger graduating classes in the next two to five years, but then he expects a steady decline for the next eight years, based only on current enrollments.

Current enrollment in the district, which includes Rockland, Owls Head and South Thomaston, is 1,476.

In SAD 28 and the Five Town CSD in Camden, enrollment is nearly 1,500, with district officials expecting it to hold steady.