<\/p>\n
For twenty years this program has been concerned chiefly with Maine of the past the doings of our people in Maine communities long ago. Today I want to present a few facts that may surprise some of you about present-day Maine.<\/p>\n
We all know that, in respect to population, Maine is a small. slow-growing state. Our total population was slightly less than a million in 1960 and probably will barely exceed a million in 1970. But there are some astounding facts about our population that are not familiar to most of us.<\/p>\n
Of course you all know that Maine’s largest city is Portland. In 1960 it had 72,566 people. That is more people than the entire population of the three counties of Lincoln, Sagadahoc and Knox combined. It was considerably more than the total number of people in three other counties: Franklin, Waldo and Piscataquis. More people live in the city of Waterville than in all of Lincoln County. Bangor has a larger population than anyone of exactly half of Maine’s counties. Eight counties have each of them fewer than Bangor’s 38,912 people. In fact Bangor is just about the size in population of all of Somerset County, which has 39,749 people. That, in spite of the fact that Somerset contains the sizable towns of Skowhegan, Pittsfield, Madison and Fairfield.<\/p>\n
Anyone would guess that Cumberland is Maine’s largest county, which indeed it is. But which county comes second? Many people would say York. but that is not correct. despite its large communities of Saco. Biddeford. Sanford and Kittery. Maine’s second county is Aroostook. with 106.000 people compared with York’s 99,000. The smallest county is Lincoln with only 18,000.<\/p>\n
Today mere size doesn’t distinguish a Maine city from a Maine town. Because it is one of Maine’s oldest cities. Hallowell has persistently retained its city charter, although it is now not only our second smallest city, but actually smaller than many Maine towns. Maine’s largest town, Sanford, has never sought a city charter, though in 1960 it had 14,962 people. Sanford is larger than anyone of the cities of Saco. Presque Isle, Westbrook, Ellsworth, Gardiner. Hallowell, Rockland. Brewer, Old Town. Bath, Belfast. Calais or Eastport. That makes a total of 13 cities that are all smaller than Sanford, leaving only eight of Maine’s 21 cities that are larger than the York County town of the once famous Goodall Mills. Maine’s smallest city is Eastport. whose 1960 population was 2,537, fewer people than live in my own native town of Bridgton. which wouldn’t think of calling itself a city. Larger than anyone of half of Maine’s cities are the towns of Rumford. Caribou, Kittery, Orono and Millinocket.<\/p>\n
We do not need to be told that for many years people have been leaving our rural communities. For instance, the once prosperous town of Mayfield, north of Athens, now does not exist at all, even as a plantation. This area is now a part of Maine’s huge unorganized territory. Other towns have become plantations, thus retaining some form of self-government. But it is amazing to note how many communities have clung to town organization with absurdly small numbers.<\/p>\n
The town of Upton. over near the New Hampshire border, had in 1960 just 35 people, while its neighboring town of Newry had 18. Edinberg in Penobscot County numbered 19 inhabitants. Over in Washington County there were 14 pepple in Beddington. 26 in Deblois, and 47 in Centerville. More than 100 Maine towns have fewer than 200 inhabitants.<\/p>\n
When one considers the numerous Maine lakes, one realizes that quite a bit of the area of our state is water; as a result the land area is slightly less than 20 million acres. Now here is the astounding fact: four-fifths of all land in Maine is forest. The figures are 15,710,000 acres of forest land, and 3.982,000 acres of all other land. Much of the forest land is in what is officially called unorganized territory. having neither cities, towns nor plantations — nothing but dense woods. In 1820, when Maine became a state, those wild lands were equally divided between Maine and Massachusetts. After much of it was sold or granted to private parties, Maine bought Massachusetts’ remainder. and in 1876 Maine itself disposed of its last remaining public land.<\/p>\n
Who owns the Maine forests today? Because there were many holdings of small lots of less than 100 acres, Maine forest lands in 1960 were in the possession of 77.479 owners. However, 28 of those owners each held more than 50,000 acres. Largest of the individual owners were the Coburn heirs, inheritors of the great land holdings of Governor Abner Coburn and his brothers of Skowhegan. But it was the big pulp and paper companies that then owned and still own the bulk of Maine forest lands. The largest holder is the Great Northern Paper Company with 2,261,000 acres. Second is International Paper with 850,000. Scott owns 650,000 acres; Penobscot Chemical Fibre 500,000; St. Regis 700,000; and St. Croix 350,000. In addition to its large holdings in New Hampshire, the Brown Company owns 385,000 acres of Maine land. Although considered a large company, Oxford has only 160,000 acres. Other companies, controlling together more than half a million acres are S.D. Warren, Eastern, Pejepscot, Irving and Hudson. In total, 13 pulp and paper companies control 6.628,000 acres of Maine land.<\/p>\n
I do not need to tell you that Maine has such an irregular shore line that, if one follows every indentation from the New Brunswick border to the Piscataqua at Portsmouth. N.H \u2022\u2022 he will travel more than 3,000 miles. The actual distance is 3,478 miles. It is often truly said that Maine’s coastline is longer than the airline distance from Montreal to Key West, but let me give you some facts that are even more impressive. The two points in the United States that are farthest apart are West Quoddy Head, near Lubec. Maine, and Point Arena on the Pacific in California. The distance between those two places is 2.847 miles. or 631 miles shorter than the Maine coastline. The distance from the most inland arm of the Atlantic on the U.S. east coast to the most inland arm of the Pacific on our west coast is 2,807, or 671 miles shorter than the Maine coastline.<\/p>\n
Few people today speak of the Maine forests as wild lands, the term applied to them for more than a century. The reason is that today that land is so profitable in its timber products. Let me give you a few figures about income from the Maine woods for a recent year: pulpwood. 1,685.000 cords yielding $200 million; lumber. 300 million board feet worth $28 million; over a million Christmas trees bringing $725.000; 155,000 cords of firewood for $3 million; and railroad ties, posts and rails worth another million. The total value of Maine wood products was $385 million.<\/p>\n
Did you know that prisoners once played a part in Maine lumbering, and not many years ago at that? Plenty of Waterville people remember that trains loaded with German prisoners of war passed through our city on the way from Halifax to camps in this country during World War II. The war caused serious scarcity of labor. Among the much needed articles for army camps was lumber and there was great need for paper products. Both sawed lumber and pulp were in strong demand. So it was decided to send some of those German prisoners into the Maine woods.<\/p>\n
Two thousand prisoners were allotted to various companies in Maine. distributed in four work camps: on Spencer Lake near Jackman. at Seboomook, at Princeton and at Houlton. The companies involved were the Great Northern, the Hollingsworth and Whitney, the Penobscot Company, the Seaboard Paper, and the Eastern Corporation. The prisoners were housed in compounds supervised by the U.S. Army. Food and clothing were furnished by our government. The companies paid the government five dollars a cord for the cuttings. The men worked in details of 25 men each under a civilian foreman. Many of the prisoners. unused to forest work, had to be instructed in the use of tools and in woods practices. But they proved to be ready learners.<\/p>\n
The demands upon them were not excessive. They were expected to cut only about half as much as an experienced woodsman. When the enterprise was completed. both army and mill authorities agreed that those Germans had worked well, had taken pride in their labor, and had caused no trouble. In the Seboomook area alone the prisoners produced 68,592 cords between 1944 and 1946. In the Houlton area, all 1,600 prisoners in five different camps were taken from the woods to harvest the potato crop, just as happens year after year, when school children are taken out of what some of them call their prison, the schoolroom, to get in the potatoes.<\/p>\n
Now let’s get back to that portion of Maine that is under water. Maine’s largest lake, of course. is Moosehead that covers 117 square miles, or more than half a million acres. The second largest lake is Sebago, covering 45 square miles. Chesuncook has 36 square miles. Mooselookmeguntic 26. and Grand Lake 24. Great Pond of the Belgrade Lakes covers 13 square miles and China Lake seven. Some of the lakes near the sources of the Allagash are large bodies of water: Chamberlain has 23 square miles, Churchill 18, and Eagle 10. Damariscotta Lake from Jefferson to Damariscotta Mills covers seven square miles, and Long Lake at Naples, Bridgton and Harrison covers nine and a half.<\/p>\n
How high are Maine mountains? Smaller, of course, than what the early colonists called the White Hills of New Hampshire. but none the less no dwarfs. Katahdin rises almost exactly a mile above sea level. It height is 5.267 feet. The now famous ski mountain, Sugarloaf. comes second with 4, 180 feet. It was what we call the Rangeley Mountains, known to Arnold’s Expedition of 1775 as the Height of Land. that contain all of Maine’s mountains except Katahdin that rise above 4,000 feet — such peaks as Old Speck. Bigelow, Saddleback and Abraham.<\/p>\n
Finally let us see just how long are Maine’s largest streams. The Penobscot is 240 miles. the Kennebec 170, the Androscoggin 174, the Saco 121. and the Aroostook 100. The Sandy River runs for 65 miles. the St. George for 42, the Dead River for 48. the Sebasticook for 74. the Piscataquis for 67, and the Mattawamkeag for 83.<\/p>\n
Well, that is enough about modern Maine for one broadcast of Little Talks. So we will now say goodbye until next week.<\/p>\n
Year: 1969<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #790, Broadcast on January 12, 1969<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42949],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8884"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}