MEMaine Fun Facts

Maine's tidal coastline measures about 3,478 miles, more than California's, folded into a straight line distance of roughly 228 miles. The bays and inlets double back on themselves so many times that the state is best understood as a coastline with a forest attached, and about 89 percent of it is still forest.

Facts most people get wrong

• Maine is not always the first place in America to see the sunrise. The honor rotates through the year. From roughly October into early March it belongs to Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park. In spring and summer it moves to Mars Hill, and then to West Quoddy Head in Lubec.
• Lobster was once prison food. In colonial New England it washed ashore in windrows and was fed to inmates, indentured servants and livestock. It became a delicacy only after railroad dining cars in the late 1800s began serving it to inland passengers who had never heard its reputation.
• Maine was not one of the original colonies. It was governed as part of Massachusetts until March 15, 1820, when it entered the Union as a free state under the Missouri Compromise, balancing Missouri's admission as a slave state.
• Moxie is older than Coca-Cola. Dr. Augustin Thompson of Union, Maine, introduced it as a patent medicine in 1876, ten years before Coke existed. It became the official state soft drink in 2005.
• The whoopie pie and the blueberry pie hold different titles. A 2011 law made the whoopie pie the official state treat and blueberry pie the official state dessert, after legislators argued over which one deserved the higher rank.
• Maine is nearly as large as the rest of New England combined. Its 35,385 square miles come close to the total of New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island put together.

Records and firsts

• Maine lands roughly 80 percent of the American lobster catch, and Stonington, on Deer Isle, is the busiest lobster port in the state.
• About 89 percent of Maine is forested, the highest share of any state in the country.
• Maine grows almost all of the wild lowbush blueberries harvested in the United States, concentrated in Washington and Hancock counties.
• Cadillac Mountain, at 1,530 feet, is the highest point on the eastern seaboard of the United States.
• Mount Katahdin, 5,269 feet, is the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, roughly 2,190 miles from its start in Georgia.
• Maine has the oldest median age of any state, close to 45 years.
• The L.L. Bean flagship in Freeport has stayed open 24 hours a day since 1951. The doors have no locks.

Geography that surprises

• Maine borders exactly one other state, New Hampshire. No other state has a single neighbor.
• More than half of Maine's land is unorganized territory with no town government at all. Those townships go by survey coordinates instead of names, like T5 R7 WELS, meaning township 5, range 7, west of the easterly line of the state.
• Fort Kent, at the top of the state, lies farther north than Montreal.
• West Quoddy Head in Lubec is the easternmost point of the United States mainland, and the coast holds more than 3,000 islands.
• The northern border was settled by the Aroostook War of 1838 and 1839, a standoff with British Canada over timber rights that ended without a battle. The Webster-Ashburton Treaty drew the current line in 1842.

Where the name comes from

Nobody is certain, which is unusual for a state name. Maine appears in a 1622 land grant to Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Captain John Mason with no explanation attached. One theory is nautical: sailors working the offshore islands called the mainland the main, and Maine was where you went ashore. The other traces it to the French province of Maine, possibly honoring Henrietta Maria, queen consort of Charles I, who was said to hold land there. The Maine legislature took a side in 2001, passing a resolution recognizing the French province connection. Two smaller distinctions come free with it. Maine is the only state with a one syllable name, and the only one whose motto is a single word, Dirigo, Latin for I lead.

Quick stats

• Population: 1 to 5 million
• Area rank: #39 of 50
• Admitted: 1820
• Capital: Augusta
• Largest city: Portland
• Time zone: Eastern

Bordering states

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