Maine

C

Plants and Animals

Almost 80 per cent of Maine is covered with forest, about two thirds of which is made up of softwoods such as white pine, pitch pine, Norway pine, and spruce. Cranberries are widely distributed in the marshlands. White-tailed deer are numerous, and other large mammals include moose and black bear. Seals live along the coast. Among the many birds of Maine are chickadees, sparrows, and cormorants.

D

Resources, Products, and Industries

As in the other New England states, metallic minerals have never been important in Maine. Non-metallic minerals found in the state include asbestos, sand and gravel, and gemstones. Principal farm and agricultural products include potatoes, dairy products, chicken eggs, and blueberries.

A considerable amount of pulp for paper-making and timber is produced from Maine’s many forests. The state is famous for its seafood and has an important fishing industry, with lobster the most valuable product. Leading manufactured goods are paper and wood products, footwear and other leather goods, and textiles. Shipbuilding is an important industry.

III

Population

Maine had 1,317,207 (2007 estimate) inhabitants. Whites made up 98.4 per cent of the population in 1990 and blacks 0.4 per cent. In addition, the population included 5,945 Native Americans, the largest groups being the Penobscot and the Passamaquoddy, as well as some 1,262 people of Chinese ancestry, 1,058 people of Filipino descent, 858 people of Korean origin, and 642 people of Vietnamese extraction. Approximately 6,800 people were of Latino background, and a substantial number of people were of French-Canadian origin.

Its major cities are the capital Augusta (18,626 (2005 estimate)); Portland (63,889 (2005 estimate)); Leinston; Bangor (31,074 (2005 estimate)); Auburn (23,602 (2005 estimate)); and South Portland (23,742 (2005 estimate)).

A

Education

In the late 1990s Maine spent about US$7,670 on each student's education, compared to a national average of about US$6,835.

At the beginning of the 21st century Maine had 33 institutions of higher education. Major institutions included the University of Maine (1865), at Orono; the University of Southern Maine (1878), at Portland; Bates College (1855), at Lewiston; Bowdoin College (1794), at Brunswick; and Husson College (1898), at Bangor.

B

Places of Interest

A prime attraction is Acadia National Park, mostly on Mount Desert Island, which includes rugged coastal areas. Mount Katahdin, in Baxter State Park, is the northern terminus of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, which runs south to Georgia. Roosevelt Campobello International Park, encompassing the summer home of the family of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, is on Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Canada, near Maine.

Numerous mansions, old houses, and rural churches recall Maine’s past. St Croix Island International Historic Site, near Calais, encompasses the site of a short-lived French settlement of 1604-1605. In Burnham Tavern (1770), in Machias, Americans plotted the capture (1775) of the British warship Margaretta in the first naval encounter of the American War of Independence. The Wadsworth-Longfellow House, in Portland, was the childhood home of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Maine has a variety of cultural institutions. Among the state’s museums are the Portland Museum of Art, with a significant collection of 19th-century American painting; the Farnsworth Art Museum and Wyeth Center, in Rockland; the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, in Brunswick, with a large collection of European, American, and Asian art; the Maine State Museum, in Augusta, with displays on historical, ethnographical, and scientific topics; the Robert Abbe Museum of Stone Age Antiquities, in Acadia National Park near Northeast Harbor; the Hudson Museum of the University of Maine, an anthropological museum, in Orono; the Penobscot Marine Museum; the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Museum, near Poland Spring, with buildings and handicrafts of a Shaker religious group founded in the late 18th century; and the Colby Museum of Art, in Waterville.