Maine
Northeastern-most state of the USA, largest of the New England states;
nicknamed Pine Tree State
Area:
86,200 sq km/33,273 sq mi
Capital:
Augusta
Towns and Cities:
Portland, Lewiston, Bangor Physical: Appalachian Mountains; 80% of
the state is forested
Features:
Kennebec and Penobscot rivers; 5,600 km/3,500 mi of coastline; Acadia
National Park - including Bar Harbor and Mount Desert Island - the first
national park in eastern USA; Baxter State Park, with Mount Katahdin
(1,605 m/ 5,267 ft), the highest peak in the state, the northern end
of the Appalachian Trail; canoeing on the Allagush Wilderness Waterway;
Moosehead Lake (190 sq km/120 sq mi), New England's largest lake; Sebago
Lake; Penobscot Bay, with lobster fishing centred on Rockland; Roosevelt
Campobello International Park, the summer home of President F D Roosevelt;
South Berwick, the site of the first permanent settlement in Maine (1631),
with old houses including Sarah Orne Jewett House (1774); Artist's Covered
Bridge, Newry (1872); Colonial York; Camden; Castine; Prout's Neck,
the summer home of the artist Winslow Homer, with Portland Head Light;
Paris Hill; Ogunquit, a 19th-century artists' colony; the Kennebunks,
including Kennebunkport; Fort Kent (1839); Portland Museum of Art, with
a 1983 wing designed by I M Pei, housing a collection of American art;
Old Port Exchange, Portland, a renovated 19th-century waterfront area;
Musical Wonder House, Wiscasset, with a collection of antique musical
boxes and mechanical musical instruments; Maine Maritime Museum, Bath;
Bowdoin College (1794); Norway, famous for the manufacture of snowshoes
(Admiral Peary walked to the North Pole on Norway snowshoes); Perham's
Mineral Store, West Paris; L L Bean store, Freeport ; Kittery, with
factory outlet stores ; Poland Spring, source of mineral water
Industries:
Dairy and market garden produce, paper, pulp, timber, footwear, textiles,
fish, lobster; tourism is important to the economy
Population:
(1995) 1,241,400
Famous People:
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Edward Arlington Robinson,
Edna St Vincent Millay
History:
Permanently settled by the British from 1623; absorbed by Massachusetts
in 1691; became a state in 1820. In colonial days, white-pine
masts were built for the Royal Navy at Falmouth (now Portland).
Maine produces 98% of the nation's blueberries and has the largest
papermaking capacity of any of the 50 states but is generally
economically depressed.
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