Places

Maine: A Treasure Trove of Surprising Facts and Unique Features

Discover the fascinating and unique facts about Maine, including its geography, wildlife, history, culture, and more in this detailed article.

By Written Facts StaffJune 5, 2023Updated October 7, 20269 min read

Maine has more tidal shoreline than California, more moose than any other state outside Alaska, the largest rotating globe on Earth, and a store that hasn’t locked its doors since 1951. It also produces almost all of America’s wild blueberries and, for part of every year, gets the country’s first sunrise. Here are the facts that hold up, with the numbers behind them.

The basics

Maine became the 23rd state on March 15, 1820. Before that it was part of Massachusetts, and its admission as a free state was paired with Missouri’s admission as a slave state under the Missouri Compromise. So Maine was never one of the original thirteen colonies, even though its coast saw fighting in the Revolution.

Augusta is the capital and Portland is the largest city. The 2020 census counted 1,362,359 people, which puts Maine in the bottom quarter of states by population. By area it ranks 39th, but it is the largest of the six New England states and nearly as big as the other five put together.

Water is everywhere. The state counts about 6,000 lakes and ponds and roughly 5,100 rivers and streams.

Geography

The first sunrise in the country (some of the year)

Maine is the easternmost of the lower 48 states. Its easternmost point, West Quoddy Head in Lubec, sticks out farther east than anywhere else in the contiguous U.S.

That doesn’t mean West Quoddy Head always sees the sun first. From October 7 to March 6, the first sunrise in the country lands on the summit of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park, because its 1,530-foot height lets it see over the horizon earlier. West Quoddy Head wins from March 7 to March 24 and from September 19 to October 6. If you’re reading this on October 7, today is the day Cadillac takes over.

Cadillac is also the highest point on the U.S. Atlantic seaboard, and you can drive to the top. In peak season the National Park Service requires a vehicle reservation for the summit road, so check before you go.

The coastline is longer than California’s, barely

Measured in a straight general line, Maine’s coast is only about 228 miles long. But NOAA’s tidal shoreline count, which follows every bay, cove, island and tidal river, puts Maine at 3,478 miles. California comes in at 3,427 miles, so Maine wins by about 51 miles.

A common claim says Maine has more coastline than any state except Alaska. That’s wrong by NOAA’s own numbers: Florida (8,436 miles) and Louisiana (7,721 miles) both have far more tidal shoreline. Alaska tops everyone at over 33,000 miles.

Katahdin, the end of the Appalachian Trail

Mount Katahdin in Baxter State Park is Maine’s highest point at 5,269 feet. It’s the northern end of the Appalachian Trail, so the summit sign is where northbound thru-hikers finish a walk of roughly 2,200 miles from Georgia. The climb is steep and rocky, with about 4,000 feet of elevation gain, and most hikers need 8 to 12 hours round trip.

Wildlife

Moose

Maine has the largest moose population in the lower 48. A 2012 aerial survey by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife put the herd at about 76,000. Later estimates have come in lower, around 60,000 to 70,000, after years of heavy winter tick losses among calves. Either way, Montana, Wyoming and Minnesota each count well under 15,000.

A big bull can top 1,000 pounds and stand about 6 feet at the shoulder. That’s why “brake for moose” signs are serious: a collision with an animal that tall puts its body at windshield height.

Black bears

Maine also has one of the biggest black bear populations east of the Mississippi. State estimates have climbed from about 23,000 to well over 30,000 in the last couple of decades. They eat mostly plants (berries, nuts, grasses) plus insects and the occasional carcass.

Puffins

Atlantic puffins nest on a handful of islands off Maine, at the southern edge of their range. By the early 1900s hunting had nearly wiped them out; Matinicus Rock was down to a single pair. Starting in 1973, the National Audubon Society’s Project Puffin moved chicks from Newfoundland to Eastern Egg Rock and later Seal Island to rebuild colonies. Today Eastern Egg Rock, Seal Island, Matinicus Rock, Petit Manan and Machias Seal Island together host about 1,300 nesting pairs. You can see them from tour boats in June and July.

The lobster business

Maine lands far more American lobster than any other state. The catch has dropped in recent years, though: the Maine Department of Marine Resources reported a little over 86 million pounds in 2024, down from 96.9 million in 2023 and the lowest in about 15 years. Prices held up. Lobstermen were paid an average $6.14 a pound at the dock in 2024, worth about $528 million in total.

History

The Battle of Machias

In June 1775, residents of Machias, in what was then the Maine district of Massachusetts, captured the British armed schooner Margaretta. It’s often called the first naval battle of the American Revolution.

Stephen King’s Derry is Bangor

Stephen King grew up partly in Maine, went to the University of Maine, and set dozens of stories in the state. His fictional town of Derry, the setting of It and Insomnia, is based on Bangor. The Kings’ red Victorian house in Bangor, with its bat-and-spider iron fence, is now home to his personal archive, and a guest house next door hosts writers in residence. The King family no longer lives there full time, so don’t expect to run into him at the grocery store.

The toothpick capital of the world

That title belonged to Strong, a small town in western Maine, not Portland. Charles Forster opened a toothpick mill there in 1887 to use the area’s white birch, and at its peak the plant turned out about 20 million toothpicks a day. For most of the 20th century, Maine made most of the wooden toothpicks used in the U.S. Cheap imports and plastic picks ended the run, and the last Forster mill in Strong closed in 2003.

Food and drink

Whoopie pies

Two soft chocolate cake rounds with a fluffy white filling. The Maine Legislature made the whoopie pie the official state treat in 2011, and named blueberry pie, made with wild Maine blueberries, the official state dessert. Where it was invented is still argued. Maine points to Labadie’s Bakery in Lewiston, which says it sold them as early as 1925. Pennsylvania’s Amish country claims them too, and nobody has the paperwork to settle it.

Moxie

Moxie is a dark, bitter soda flavored with gentian root, and people either love it or can’t finish a can. It started around 1876 as a patent medicine called “Moxie Nerve Food,” made in Lowell, Massachusetts by Dr. Augustin Thompson, who was born in Union, Maine. It became Maine’s official soft drink in 2005. The word “moxie,” meaning nerve or guts, comes from the soda.

Wild blueberries

Maine is the largest producer of wild (lowbush) blueberries in the world and grows nearly all of the U.S. crop. In 2023 its farms harvested about 87.6 million pounds. Wild blueberries are smaller than the cultivated highbush kind you see in plastic clamshells, and almost all of the Maine crop is frozen, so that’s where you’ll usually find them.

Fiddleheads

In spring, Mainers forage the tightly curled shoots of the ostrich fern, called fiddleheads. They taste a bit like asparagus. Cook them well: boil for about 15 minutes or steam for 10 to 12. Raw or undercooked fiddleheads have been linked to food poisoning.

Odd landmarks

L.L.Bean never locks the door

Leon Leonwood Bean started the company in Freeport in 1912 selling a rubber-bottomed hunting boot. Hunters kept knocking on his door at all hours, so in 1951 he had the locks taken off, and the Freeport flagship has been open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year ever since with a short break during the 2020 pandemic. The company is still privately owned by Bean’s descendants.

Eartha, the world’s largest rotating globe

Eartha sits in a glass atrium in Yarmouth, inside the former headquarters of the map company DeLorme (Garmin bought DeLorme and the building in 2016). Guinness measured it at 41 feet 1.5 inches across. It weighs about 5,600 pounds, is built at a scale of 1 inch to 16 miles, and tilts 23.5 degrees like the real Earth. You can see it through the windows any time and usually go inside during business hours.

The Desert of Maine

Maine has a desert, sort of. In Freeport there’s a patch of bare, sandy glacial silt about 20 acres in size, surrounded by pine forest. The silt was left by the ice sheet more than 10,000 years ago and lay buried under topsoil. Then the Tuttle family farmed the land from 1821, and poor crop rotation and too many sheep stripped the topsoil away. The sand spread until they gave up the farm in 1890. In 1925 a new owner bought it for $300 and opened it as a tourist stop, which it still is.

If you only remember one thing

A lot of “Maine facts” floating around online are half right. The coastline is longer than California’s but not second only to Alaska’s. The toothpicks came from Strong, not Portland. The Acadia dunes don’t exist, but the Desert of Maine does. When a Maine fact sounds too neat, check the town and the number before you repeat it.

Sources (11)