Boom and Bust in Maine

You can learn a lot about Maine from the various licence plates you see on local cars.  Illustrations include the obligatory red lobster, a black capped chickadee (willow tit) on a pine bough and the evocative black and white loon (great northern diver). From this you learn that Maine is a rural state with pine trees, terrestrial and marine wildlife. Two strap-lines are used; "Vacationland" and "The Pine-tree State."   They have also tried "America as it was supposed to be." The two licence plates shown here have alternative captions.

The pine tree state caption is an interesting one. Europeans were first attracted to Maine by the abundant sea life, particularly cod, haddock and halibut. In those days lobsters were not seen as having any commercial value. They would fish the Georges Bank up to the Bay of Fundy, going ashore to get water and cut white pine trees to replace masts and spars on their boats. The trees were abundant and ideal for the job. In winter, if there was a lake near the shore, sailors could collect ice to chill their catch. (Boats from Spain and Portugal brought salt instead.) So we then had three important commodities; fish, ice and timber.

The first permanent settlers were mostly from the South West of England and they were practical types, such as farmers, sailors and fishermen. If they ever thought about their politics they were Royalists. In contrast, the first Europeans down the coast in Massachusetts were Puritans from East Anglia. They were mostly men of letters rather than farmers or fishermen and they supported the Parliamentarian cause.

Although both groups were essentially English, they were poles apart and their relationship was always stormy. It still is. The Mainers generally got on with the Native Americans quite well while the Pilgrims didn't. Boston became the power-base for aristocratic adventurers to start up and soon became the headquarters for the colony. Maine became part of Massachusetts and the land was divided between absentee landlords who brought in a second wave of Protestant tenants from Belfast and the Scottish Lowlands.

The English Civil War, various "Indian Wars" and war with the French settlers played havoc with the economy; in fact Maine lost most of its early settlements completely.  But the rivers and the sea remained full of fish and the woods had plenty of game. When the good times returned, Mainers built a fleet of wooden ships to exploit the growing market for fish and timber in the new cities further south.

In this photo taken near Phippsburg on the Kennebec River, you can see a wall built to hold back water in a "pond" to provide winter ice for the fishing trade. It was also a collecting point for timber that was floated down the river from inland. As the tide fell, a tide-powered saw-mill was operated so that poles and boards could be made on site to order. At low tide you can still see the remains of an array of docks and moorings used by visiting ships in the 19th century. Up to 3000 vessels a year were using the Kennebec by 1892, necessitating the construction of  a set of light houses upstream to Bath; but the good times were not to last.

As fleets from other states and from Europe started to fish for the cod, the size and numbers of the stocks fell rapidly. Mainers could not compete with the bigger ships that were fishing out their livelihoods. Metal ships needed far less wood and ice was readily available in Canada or ships could be refrigerated. Our three commodities were almost worthless.

Wooden boat building continues on a small scale but they now make steel ships in Maine. World War 2 was good for the Bath Ironworks on the Kennebec. They still build war ships there today, but it's always touch-and-go due to competition for contracts from China and other countries. The ironworks provides work for a lot of mid-coast men so, having lost the air base at nearby Brunswick, it is very important to maintain engineering jobs in Bath.

The famous lobster trade was built upon local demand at first, but eventually live lobsters were exported to the Eastern seaboard cities. Canneries took all the lobsters they could get and, when they ran out, they moved to Canada leaving behind another exhausted resource. Today, the lobster trade is brisk but some of the lobsters you eat in restaurants will be Canadian. Maine has strict conservation laws that the lobstermen understand to be nescessary, but they can't be too thrilled about Maine importing lobsters from anywhere else.

Summer tourism blossomed when it became fashionable to have a summer home on the coast. Families would de-camp to their mansion or to a more rustic camp for the entire summer. The Great Depression of the 1930s pretty much killed off the summer trade but it later returned in a different form. Now holiday-makers come for only a week or maybe two. The accessible parts of Western and Mid-coast Maine are awash with holiday homes and guest houses.

Land prices at the water's edge continue to climb, pricing-out the offspring of the locals who had previously sold out to get by. Houses inland are almost worthless because there is no way to make a living away from the coast. There are blueberry barrens where a major crop is gathered, mostly from the wild, but farming never really worked here and the paper industry runs huge tracts of  forested land with only a handful of mobile workers.

Hunting and sport fishing are money earners for those involved and the big outfitting companies have bases and retail outlets in Maine, but the resource is fragile.

Freshwater fisheries are stocked by the State Fish and Wildlife Service. Bass, brook trout and landlocked salmon are popular species in lakes and rivers, but Maine is more important for its salmon fishing in the big rivers Down East towards the Canadian border. This fishery holds on by a thread. Similarly the striped bass fishery on the Kennebec has survived but is now threatened again by commerce down-stream in neighbouring states. Salmon and stripers are migratory and so action by one state can undermine conservation measures being taken by another. Will we never learn?


Many Mainers have to hold down several jobs to survive there all year round. Lobster fishing is not a full time job for most of those involved and farming as almost a hobby. Tourism is seasonal too. At low tide, I have seen locals digging worms for export to be used in sea-fishing, but foreign competition is pricing them out and widescale private development is preventing them from accessing the shore in many places. People rake seaweed to make horse pills and fishermen dredge up sea-urchins for export to Japan. Mainers will try their hand at anything to make ends meet.

Before you accuse me of plagiarism, I have to admit that, prior to going on this year's trip to Maine I read "The Lobster Coast" by Colin Woodward (Penguin Books). I found this history of Maine really useful background reading for the stories that emerged on our trip. On a boat trip to see 7 lighthouses, the skipper added many more local details. I read Linda Greenlaw's books about fishing and lobstering some years ago, but I'm sure bits of them have resurfaced in my stories. I have a huge stack of field guides and natural history books by my bed as well. As a good, humorous guide to the quirks of Maine, you have to get hold of "Maine Curiosities" by Tim Sample and Steve Bither. I haven't even scratched the surface of the treasures that they describe in their book of offbeat stuff but they inspired me to go and find curiosities of my own.