Maine, ME

The State of Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is the northernmost portion of New England.

The state is known for its scenery — its jagged, mostly rocky coastline, its low, rolling mountains, and its heavily forested interior — as well as for its seafood cuisine, especially lobsters and clams.

The original inhabitants of the territory that is now Maine were Algonquian-speaking peoples. The first European settlement in Maine was in 1604 by a French party.

The first English settlement in Maine was established by the Plymouth Company at Popham in 1607, the same year as the settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. Both colonies were predated by the Roanoke Colony by 22 years. Because the Popham Colony did not survive the harsh Maine winters and the Roanoke Colony was lost, Jamestown enjoys the distinction of being regarded as America’s first permanent settlement.

A number of English settlements were established along the coast of Maine in the 1620s, although the rugged climate, deprivations and Indian attacks wiped out many of them over the years.

As Maine entered the 18th century, only a half dozen settlements still survived. American and British forces contended for Maine's territory during the American Revolution and the War of 1812.

Because it was physically separated from the rest of Massachusetts (properly speaking, the Department of Maine was an exclave of Massachusetts) and because it was growing in population at a rapid rate, Maine became the 23rd state on March 15, 1820 as a component of the Missouri Compromise.

Origin of the name

Whatever the origin, the name was fixed in 1665 when the King's Commissioners ordered that the "Province of Maine" be entered from then on in official records.

Geography

To the south and east is the Atlantic Ocean, and to the north and northeast is New Brunswick, a province of Canada. The Canadian province of Quebec is to the northwest.

Maine is both the northernmost state in New England and the largest, accounting for nearly half the region's entire land area. Maine also has the distinction of being the only state to border just one other state (New Hampshire to the west).

The municipalities of Eastport and Lubec are, respectively, the easternmost city and town in the 48 contiguous states. Maine's Moosehead Lake is the largest lake in New England (Lake Champlain being partially in New York). Mount Katahdin is both the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, which extends to Springer Mountain, Georgia, and the southern terminus of the new International Appalachian Trail, which, when complete, will run to Belle Isle, Newfoundland and Labrador.

Maine also has several unique geographical features. Machias Seal Island and North Rock, off its easternmost point, are claimed by both the U.S. and Canada and are within one of four areas between the two countries whose sovereignty is still in dispute, but is the only one of the disputed areas containing land.

Also in this easternmost area is the Old Sow, the largest tidal whirlpool in the Western Hemisphere. Maine is the most sparsely populated state east of the Mississippi River.

It is called the Pine Tree State; ninety percent of its land is forested. In the forested areas of the interior there is much uninhabited land, some of which does not have formal political organization into local units.

For example, the Northwest Aroostook, Maine unorganized territory in the northern part of the state has an area of 2,668 square miles (6,910 km˛) and a population of 27, or one person for every 100 square miles (255 km˛).

Maine is equally well known for its dramatic ocean scenery, with almost 3,500 miles (5,600 km) of shoreline[2]. West Quoddy Head is the easternmost piece of land in the contiguous 48 United States. Along the famous rock-bound coast of Maine are lighthouses, sandy beaches, quiet fishing villages and thousands of offshore islands, including the Isles of Shoals, which straddle the New Hampshire border.

Jagged rocks and cliffs and thousands of bays and inlets add to the rugged beauty of Maine's coast. Just inland, by contrast, are sparkling lakes, rushing rivers, green forests and towering mountains.

This visual contrast, forested slopes sweeping down to the sea, has been aptly summed up by American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay of Rockland and Camden, Maine in "Renascence": "All I could see from where I stood was three long mountains and a wood I turned and looked the other way and saw three islands and a bay".

More prosaic geologists describe this type of landscape as a drowned coast, where a rising sea level has invaded former land features, creating bays out of valleys and islands out of mountain tops.

A rise in the elevation of the land, due to the melting of heavy glacier ice, caused a slight rebounding effect of underlying rock; however, this land rise was not strong enough to eliminate all the effect of the rising sea level and its invasion of former land features.

Millions of people have enjoyed this coastal scenery at Maine's Acadia National Park, the only national park in New England.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Maine".