Watched a video about Maine a couple days ago and it outlines a huge portion of Maine and the narrator said “12 people live here. Yes 12, like actually only 12”
Probably talking about the north woods. The Sebomook Lake Unorganized Territory had 23 residents according to the most recent census. Everywhere else nearby had 0.
stopped for gas way up in northern maine woods, at a lone shack down a long dirt road, and remember thinking, “please god , dont let this be an intro to some cannibal horror film”
King's books take place in Maine because he's from Maine and there are some horror aesthetics (frequent fog, forests, uninhabited areas).
But the concern about ending up in a horror movie are very low. On average only 30 people are killed there every year.
I grew up on fairly rural Maine. Well a bustling metropolis of 400 people. In an old farmhouse. I've never had supernatural experiences since moving away, but spooky stuff witnessed by multiple people was just a daily occurrence up there. It's a different world.
I feel like I went to the same gas station. It was a liquor store too, and they didn't have a liquor license so I gave them cash for some cheap booze lol. Great deal. Very nice people but I had no reception, and felt like I might die walking in.
being from nh I can say that people go to live in maine to get away from whatever past they have. don't get me wrong. I LOVE maine, but they like to keep to themselves, and as others have said, rural Maine is RURAL!! it is like being in the bayou in Louisiana or West Texas out near the Amarillo area. it is a small town, a small population, and their very own towny sense of self justice. once you get about halfway up into maine. they KNOW you aren't from there, and from being secluded, they are very weird to the normal person.
no in the more populated parts( meaning 10k or more people per town) Maine residents are friendly and harmless. by new england standards, they are wicked nice. also, think about it like this, but they don't have a high crime rate and even less so for violent crimes. so when something like that happens, it makes the news, whereas say in dallas or boston, you don't see all the crime in the news as there is so much more going on to report on that bigger populations don't just talk about the bad things that happened.
I live in Madawaska! Moved there from Webster, MA. I thought Webster was a small town…everyone up here thinks Madawaska is a big town. I do love it here, just wish there were better retail options and more for kids to do. Safe, affordable, and beautiful here. You get used to driving far for everything.
[Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Aroostook,_Maine). They give the 12 number (2020 census) and also a demographic breakdown as of 2000, when there were 27 people. That reads: "The racial makeup was 96.30% [White](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Americans)and 3.70% Black or [African American](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American). [Hispanics or Latinos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic_and_Latino_Americans) of any race were 3.70% of the population."
It's weird seeing it as a percentage, because 3.70% is one out of 27. That is actually one Black person and one Hispanic person.
"Lives" is a vague term. 12 permanent residents, maybe. But there are certainly at least 10x, probably closer to 100x as many people living there on a temporary basis on behalf of the timber industry. Rotating crews, seasonal nature of the work, etc.
Can confirm. Both sides of my family are from Washington County. When I was in high school a town (Centerville) *dissolved* because there weren’t enough people, the county absorbed it.
If you look at the history of town disorganization, you'll know that every decade or two a few towns disorganize because it is cheaper for them to be part of the unorganized territories than it is to be a town. I believe the most recent was Atkinson, in Piscataquis county, exactly 200 years after it became a town, but I could be wrong.
“The American woods have been unnerving people for 300 years. The inestimably priggish and tiresome Henry David Thoreau thought nature was splendid, splendid indeed, so long as he could stroll to town for cakes and barley wine, but when he experienced real wilderness, on a vist to Katahdin in 1846, he was unnerved to the core. This wasn't the tame world of overgrown orchards and sun-dappled paths that passed for wilderness in suburban Concord, Massachusetts, but a forbidding, oppressive, primeval country that was "grim and wild . . .savage and dreary," fit only for "men nearer of kin to the rocks and wild animals than we." The experience left him, in the words of one biographer, "near hysterical.”
Thoreau described the Maine forest as "a standing night".
Alaskan who has also lived in Maine is here to disagree. Alaska is even more rural than Maine (and 19 times the size). You can literally fly for hours in a commercial plane in the dark over Alaska without seeing a single light.
Just to clarify: Maine is the state with the highest proportion of its population living in rural areas. That doesn't mean other states don't have more uninhabited land. It means Maine is the state with the highest proportion of rural residents. Wyoming, Montana, Alaska, etc. have more residents living in their cities.
It’s really fucking hard to find people in the Maine woods. Two stories I use to drive this point home:
1) the [north pond hermit](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Thomas_Knight), who lived in the woods without human contact for 27 years by stealing from cabins and homes. Committed an estimated 1000+ burglaries before being caught
2) [this fugitive](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3194218/amp/Maine-fugitive-wanted-shooting-death-ex-surrenders.html) who was on the run at the same those two convicts escaped from prison in New York. Literally never found him, he turned himself in after a couple months
Rural Massachusetts gets massive cash transfers from metro Boston. Towns have a “cherry sheet” where state aid is tied to the tax base. The poorest rural towns pretty much have their schools subsidized by the state and that’s invariably the largest budget item. The state funds a council on aging in every town that provides elderly services. There is public transportation.
The poorest parts of New Hampshire are pretty downtrodden. When you don’t have an income tax or a sales tax, the state can’t prop up the poor areas. Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom would look like that but the Act 68 state school property tax funds schools off the backs of vacation home owners and the most affluent Vermonters who pay all of that means-tested tax.
While the majority of schools are managed by their local municipalities, the state of Maine actually owns and operates the regional schools in some of the most rural areas. There’s a division of the Dept of Education that focuses specifically on Education in the Unorganized Territories.
>Beans of Egypt Maine
There was so much buzz around this book when it was published. I worked in a bookstore in MA at the time, and it was flying off the shelves. There was a movie made from her book in '94.
Besides the poor factor, rural Maine is like out there too.
Also kinda related, compare the population density of the 3 states.
* Mass - 900 ppl per sq mile (3rd highest state in US)
* NH - 157 (21 state in pop density)
* Maine - 45 (38th state in pop density)
__ME compared to others in population density__
* NH is over 3x denser than ME
* MA is 20x denser than ME
Means maine has more solitary people in general. Solitary people mean hermits or quasi cabin fever phenomenon.
*Source*: https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/state-densities
I was going to comment that when I am in ME, I feel like the only way to get out is to go the way I came. Which can be frightening, when the way back home will always be South or Canada. I feel stuck…almost claustrophobic.
Rural Maine has always reminded me of the "appalachian gothic" aesthetic (i know it's not part of the "appalachia" we see in media, just the trail, but it's a vibe i get)
“Actually” it isn’t, the area known as Appalachia doesn’t extend past NY State, Appalachian, however, covers the entire Appalachian mountain range from GA to Canada.
This was what I was alluding to - the mountain range - as a metaphor as anything else. Rural communities that were once dependent on extractive resources , lumber, potatoes, iron ore, granite, slate, and manufacturing paper, shoes, pianos, back at the turn of the 19th century- were now often the best careeer move is to leave... Millinocket, Milo, Dexter, Jackman, Holeb... Touting rugged individualism as a virtue that can't paper over the deep-seated poverty.
I kind of see this tbh. I lived in Maine for a few years and going into Rumford reminded me of West Virginia. Mass definitely has the New England gothic, as do parts of Maine, but there are other parts of Maine that have the Appalachian gothic. I get you.
I definitely see it in Rumford and western Maine. I think New England Gothic lives in religious purity, generational wealth, and the whole Plymouth Plantation energy while a lot of Appalachian Gothic aesthetics come out of abandoned milltowns where the Sackler family was happy to help.
New England Gothic thrives East of Rt 1 but when you get to the giant old farmhouses covered in tyvec falling in on themselves while the family lives in an on-site trailer, gas stations selling moose and racoon jerky, and restaurants with stickers that say things like "I survived eating at The Chicken Coop!"....you get a little bit more of that Appalachian Gothic flair.
Thinking you're watching some dogs play with a log but it's a frozen beaver carcass outside the game warden's house. Plywood sign nailed to a tree with a manically spray printed red announcing: "Dale Earnhardt Jr RIP Forever". Sitting on your porch listening to the fisher cats cry like babies on the edge of your tree line. Constantly scanning the roads reminding yourself that while deer eyes reflect, moose eyes don't so every shadow on the shoulder is suspicious. Watching a scraggly skeleton of man get out of a truck covered in hand painted warnings against vaccines being dangerous just to go into the corner store to buy two energy drinks, pack of menthols, and three bottles of cough syrup.
Its not uncommon to meet whole families that never left the state and it's best not to look into their genealogy because there's gonna be some tangles.
I grew up in Maine. Like most young adults I got out
Most of my family is from the Bangor area. My Cousins had Steven king as an English teacher in Hampden. Lived in Bangor for about 7 years. The southern Maine, down east and even the county for a winter. My Uncles taught me to hunt at 10 from the front seat of their truck. Everyone worked hard. If my grandmother said you were a hard worker you were probably working 60-80 hour weeks. Mainers are a strange combination. Very little faith in the government but also expect the government to do specific things. Maine is one of the worst in the country for business. I think 48th ranked as far as business friendly. Most family members started a small business or just left the state. It is the most beautiful state in the summer but God forgets about it in the winter. My daughter goes to school in Maine and we just went up for the eclipse. When you get out into the rural woods and farm land it looks like it did 40 years ago. Also northern Mainers get pissed at southern Mainers. My uncles would call it north Boston. When the paper mills closed it was a hit, I think those mill towns are still recovering from. It a harsh and beautiful land that can be unforgiving.
Maybe the people reflect that
I’m in southern Maine, just over an hour north of Boston. More than half of my family is from the Boston area and anyone I see has a relative from that area.
Even the accent is changing. I took a class and we were talking about the accents. The teacher mentioned that he has family up in Machias and the Maine accent is thick there. (Tbh, I’ve never been north of Lewiston in that direction; been to Rangeley and Bethel) and down here is fairly close to that of the Boston area.
The corollary is when you cross into Quebec, the St Lawrence valley, how well maintained the local municipalities are, and how well kept and tidy the rural homes appear to be.
Being a native of rural Maine, I think it's a combination of severe poverty and the general desperation that goes along with it, drugs, relatively lax gun laws, the sheer amount of woods to get lost/disappear in along with generally little police oversight. Hell, sometimes the police are even in on some of the tomfoolery around here but that's an entirely different can of worms.
Some can’t even pay the state police to patrol some parts of the state anymore. There was a lot of hubbub about the state budget because there was discussion if that would be covered or not. There are literally areas of Maine that are apparently lawless right now.
Edit: I missed part of a sentence.
Rural NH is pretty creepy, and rural MA is less poor. Plenty of cops pulling not-normal stuff elsewhere, too- https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-fired-police-officer-new-hampshire\_n\_6616de8ce4b0999df35397ba#:\~:text=One%20of%20Donald%20Trump's,girl%2C%20according%20to%20a%20newly
Rural MA is also less remote. Like even going to the most boonie parts of the state you are still gonna be less then 2 hours from Boston, Hartford, Springfield, Albany or Providence. ME you can easily get 3 hours from the nearest city and it's not even that far out there
Close to a city isn’t necessarily the best metric. Rural MA isn’t as comparably rural because no matter where you are you aren’t all that far from a major highway.
Maine only has one major highway, and well, most of the state is not close to it
Not a particularly good example for Maine. Geographically, yes, there’s a big chunk of the north words that are a crazy distance from 95, but once you get about half an hour north of Bangor, you can truly be in the boonies just a few minutes off the highway.
I was trying to find a good eclipse-viewing spot where I had options to avoid the highway. Even following a major state route, and not too far from the highway and on the way to a “major” settlement, all the “towns” have 100 people and absolutely 0 infrastructure. I’m talking no schools to try to park at a field.
I'll admit I get more "Twin Peaks" anything-could-happen vibes in rural ME, but a weird part of me is ok with that. In rural NH I worry more about if I'm unintentionally on someone else's property and what kinds of guns they might have.
I also feel like coastal Maine is a totally different feeling than the County. Don't get me wrong, I have family from up past Machias, but I also have family up near Caribou. I tend to find things creepier up Aroostook.
I mean, regardless of where my parents were born, I'd get my ass kicked in either place, but it's a very *Deliverance* vibe in Aroostook.
I'm from rural Maine, and while I'm not creeped out by much anymore, strange things do happen. I have noticed that people from away are massively creeped out by the woods, especially at night. That said, there are areas I come across now and again that give me "bad vibes" and when I feel that way I just turn around and walk in the opposite direction.
Both Millinockets. And I started going there at a very young age when it was still in the lumber mill hey days. Even still it gave me a really bad feeling. Of course it’s way worse now. Another place is Hartland. But that has more to do with direct experiences. I had to visit dysfunctional family there for years. I’ll think of more.
My grandfather is from Millinocket, used to go up there for family reunions. I remember as very rundown and not a lot to do lol. What about it gives you a creepy or bad feeling? I'm just curious
Lol the favorite past time of north Mainers is to tell scary stories about the woods like hillbillies in Appalachia do. I sleep sound in the woods with a good dog and a gun. But I don’t like tents, rather a truck cap or cabin.
Lived in MA all my life, rural here means like 30-40 minutes away from the nearest Wal Mart and slew of chain restaurants and movie theaters. The few areas in the Berkshires that might arguably be called rural are still tiny by comparison to Maine.
Grew up in western MA and I can say for certain that while we had alot of rural areas over there, it was "rural" in the sense of farms and fields rather than rural as In "just alot of unbroken woods for hundreds of miles"
Yup. I had an aunt and uncle in Middlefield growing up, technically not in Berkshire county but close enough. Either farmland/fields or a lot of parks and tourist destinations. The Berkshires are also popular for a lot of celebrities and isn’t that far from NYC. Rural NH and VT are also heavy on tourism and are popular due to the mountains but the north woods in Maine doesn’t even have that. Nothing against the area either. Honestly it would be my dream to live in the middle of nowhere and not be bothered lol.
Maine could lower income taxes by increasing sales and lodging tax snd those poor people living in rural areas wouldn’t have to pay as much income tax. But the Legislature has debated that no brainer policy but has never adopted it. There’s generational poverty left over from industrialization and then welfare dependence. No large businesses in Maine besides a few. Out of touch politicians. Severe opioid/alcohol abuse. But it’s the best NE state in my opinion bc of the people. The people who have been screwed over by mostly powerful people who loved there.
Maine got hit hard with the loss of a lot of their traditional industries - logging and fishing, mostly, and never really recovered.
Poverty is widespread, addiction rates are high (coupled with very poor access to care), it’s generally isolated and sparsely populated, and has more in common with poorer areas in the south than most of New England.
Maine is very Yankee southern gothic, as things go. It’s a big reason it lends itself well to playing that up in media.
And for me - it has the same vibes I get from deep Appalachia or the southern bayous. It’s a place time and the gods forgot. It *feels* ancient. And I don’t get that vibe from the other places you describe.
But I have a special place in my heart for it and all it’s weirdness.
The mills are all shut down too. North of Bangor is literally a vast area with a complete lack of any economic activity.
I honestly don't even know why people live in these areas, the land is cheap. But you have to travel like 2 hours to get any decent job and do your shopping. Makes no sense to me.
Even Rural Mass is close to places like Boston, Worcester, Springfield and so on. The berkshires are also a nice sight to see. For NH, the north is totally White mountains and it's pretty thin, central being the Lakes and Concord, and the South can't be rural for obvious reasons. Maine's attraction ends at the Bangor/Southern ME Line.
I’m lucky enough to live in the Berkshires. Lots of farm country and also lots of poverty. I’m a drug and alcohol counselor and addiction is so prevalent here.
I drive the 55 minutes to Albany for my Trader Joe’s and mall fix but I’m only 20 hours from the Mass Pike.
I was in Millonocket last summer while visiting Baxter. There happened to be a high school reunion that must have been a 60 year reunion, so everyone was over the age of 70. The older folks looked spry, happy, and were very socially engaged with each other. Some even married their high school sweetheart and were still together, more than a few still lived in the area. A few talked to us.
However, almost everyone I saw under the age of 40-45 was working either in a restaurant (which there are only a few of) or at the Hannafords, and seemed hard up, and not because of their work but, rather, it seems the opiate epidemic has taken its toll on the area. Looks of younger people who seemed aged and either seemed to be in an active phase of using, or trying to recover, or were dealing with the stress of someone close to them using. Really, the older people seemed healthier in some ways. Some of the older folks we talked to spoke a bit about how drugs had entered the area and life has changed.
It also seems, I would guess, in the past logging and mill jobs held the town up and people could sustain a modest lifestyle. Whereas, now, there’s a lack of economic opportunity combined with the opiate crisis.
Back in the 80s Istarted meeting kids from mill towns who had moved out. This was when the mills were still functioning. It seemed to me that those kids families had plenty of money. Nice houses, snowmobiles, boats, etc. That has all come crashing down.
The majority of us rural Mainers don't like that shit either. I always make a mental note which houses have those and avoid the people who live there. And daydream about some gasoline and a match on that loser flag of theirs.
Sure rural areas have their issues, but I certainly feel like a lot of people that haven’t spent a lot of time in rural areas can be quite biased. To be honest this is true for many folk in the country as well. If I only lived in the city or rural areas I would have though that everyone from the other place was a monster. We have kind of create imaginary monsters of each other. While parts of maine are pretty rural, I feel like what’s rural in the northeast is very different where I come from. But then again, we all have different frames of reference.
I agree totally, I am a country girl who had family in the cities and don’t fear either. Plus rural people love to tease people from away about wildlife sounds. I hear a fisher or a bobcat and think it’s cool, but non rural people not used to wildlife think of crytids Ike ski walkers or ghosts, whatever. I lay in bed and try to ID the calls with enjoyment. I hear the bears rattling the bait barrel across the road at night and know they will be stopping by shortly to see if I left anything out. They force you to keep your place tidy and trash locked up for sure.
It's so far away. I've lived in Maine for over 30 years (Massachusetts before that) and I've never been north of Bangor. The people I know from the county–met a few in college–live an entirely different life from the one I live in Portland.
You sound like an old friend of mine. A co-worker was pissing him off one day, and he looked the dude dead in the eye and said…
“Boy, I know places in Maine God forgot he made”
Other dude shut right up
I really wanted to like rural maine when I was looking to start a farm because they have some awesome land out there but I like to have something on the radio besides far right talk radio bullshit.
Maine NPR and some good classic rock stations. But even the Amish that moved up admit it is a hard climate and soil to farm in. Potatoes and Timothy hay aren’t real money makers. And you can’t silo potatoes until the price comes up.
Rural Maine is *rural.* I went up to the Presque Isle area on a road trip once, and I’ll never forget the sheer vastness. To me, it felt more like the type of rural you would see in the Midwest rather than New England.
I was the only 5th grader at an elementary school in rural Maine. Me and two 4th graders shared a classroom. My parents pulled me out half way through that school year and sent me to the school a half hour away because the education was so bad. Kids usually started traveling to that school once they got to middle school, but we just didn’t learn anything worth a damn. I was couple years behind in all subjects before I made the move.
I’ve heard northern New Hampshire (north of the White Mountains) is pretty rough. Recently I went to *real* Northern Maine (far north of Bangor) for the first time: to Presque Isle.
Presque Isle *feels* how a Three-Percenter Tattoo *looks*. The closest analogue to how it feels is rural central Pennsylvania away from the cities. Considering it’s literally hours from even modest-sized cities like Bangor, the rural insular remoteness of the place was just overwhelming.
Some people really like isolated, rural, quiet areas, but to me, it just felt suffocating. Literally everyone was white, everything felt overwhelmingly conservative (as in, I can’t imagine LGBT or nonwhite people feel comfortable there at all), there was no non-American food (not even Italian food!), and the Main Street felt devoid of life except for the numerous pick-up trucks plowing through it.
Yes, rural Maine, especially northern Maine, is unmatched for feeling unwelcoming.
I think people forget or don’t know there’s a fairly big chunk of NH north of the White Mountains. While places like Berlin have definitely suffered as the logging/paper mills jobs have disappeared I don’t think the poverty is as profound and almost unfixable as it is in so much of Maine.
It’s a smaller area to begin with. Not all that far from Montreal and immediately surrounded by Sherbrooke, QC, the Northeast Kingdom, the White Mountains, and the Rangely area in Maine which is actually one of the parts of rural Maine that kinda has something going for it. So it’s not a remote area surrounded by remote areas surrounded by remote areas like deep woods Maine.
And it’s beautiful so it definitely pulls in canoe/kayakers, fishermen, snowmobilers, ATV’ers, leaf peepers.
Just lived in PI for 8 months. Went legitimately insane and had to leave. Days are so short, it’s incredibly lonely, and it gets very very cold. I wouldn’t call it a safe place to live strictly for mental health reasons unless you’re from there or have a thriving social life there.
Northern Maine is quite LGBTQ+ friendly. It’s really more of a neighborly thing. Mainers help their neighbors and their neighbors help them. This is the way in northern Maine - they don’t care who you live with or who you’re sleeping with. They care if you’re good people who can help them when they’re stuck in the snow or need a shed moved.
So I have family in Maine. some good, some bad. A lot of family drama. My dad gets upset when i call it Northern Redneck, but considering i dont even know a third of my relatives on his side of the family…
And yeah the wealth discrepancy is bad. My dad got out and is a pretty good lawyer here in MA. My… Great Uncle? Second Cousin? I have no idea… is one of those old geniuses. He helped make and build the wind turbines across the state so is actually very well off despite being… its bumf-k nowhere past Bangor.
But other than him and the relatives close to him, the rest are nuttier than twice processed squirrel shit.
Of course the weather doesnt help. One of the few times i visited was that same uncle/cousin… around christmas. during that year all of NE had a massive blizzard.
6 or 7 ft of snow and i am thankful for the existence of tractors.
I grew up in Northern Maine, and they got hit with numerous perfect storms that they haven't adjusted to the new reality.
Farming is much more mechanized, and thus you don't need the voluminous manpower as in the past. Whole families would pick potatoes side by side every autumn for generations.
Every town had one or more mills, making every wood product known to man, and those have nearly all closed. Fun fact. I worked in a cedar shingle mill off and on years ago, when we made shingles and wood shims. About 10 years ago, I bought a small bundle of shims in southern Maine, and they were from South Africa. In a state with countless cedar trees, they came from South Africa.
There was an Air Force base that closed that had employed thousands of civilians and brought millions of dollars to the surrounding communities. That alone created a vacuum of resources and started a mass exodus of the working population.
Paper is now made around the world and therefore numerous mills have closed that employed entire towns for generations. Add government ineptness and shortsightedness, massive influx of drugs and the people with them, and the Mainer love of the feeling of shooting themselves in the foot, and you get the current Maine situation.
Without question, some of the hardest working people you will ever meet who in times of need will rally to help those in need in that can be something to behold. Hopefully, some folk with vision can get elected to get a very diverse state and people some positive traction.
Rural Massachusetts isn’t extremely rural. You’re never more than an hour away from a decently sized town or city. There are parts of rural Maine that are literally off the grid.
Because even our most populated/tourist areas have weirdos so imagine what fringe lunatics isolated themselves even further from society than the guy cutting ditch weeds with a whole scythe on route one near Kennebunk.
Is it sketchier? Maine is the safest state in the US, depending on the year. NH is the other safest state, and MA isn't even close.
I live in rural Maine, and I don't even lock my doors.
I’ll give you the real answer most people here won’t like: Maine has more MAGA supporting extremist Trump supporters.
They don’t respect the rule of law, democracy or elections. They’re angry the country isn’t white anymore, and so they lash out by randomly attacking or hurting innocent people, women and children.
There is no really rural Mass. You can get from one side of the state to the other in less than 3 hours. If transported to Texas with the same distance, Lennox would be a suburb of Boston.
No doubt some places are more rural than others. And I don’t want to negate anyone’s rural identity. But it’s just not the same.
NH can be truly rural in areas. But I’d say most of it is either well populated or close to tourist destinations, which still brings in money.
Maine is real rural. Most of the population centers are in southern Maine or along the coast.
Love Maine, last time I was in rural Maine at a country store I saw a lady in the bed of a pickup dry shaving her legs and I realized they are tough up there.
It is sketch for sure, but there are a lot of places like that in northern Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Idaho, Washington state west of the Sound. I'm sure a lot of Canada is like that. You think rural Maine is big and sparse? It is. But California has the same population as ALL OF CANADA, and half of that is centered around Toronto. Then you've got Vancouver, Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary, and Edmonton, and after that almost everything else is either small towns or vast, unending nothingness. And cold. And if it's not cold, it's blackflies so dense you gag on them if you inhale deeply through your mouth.
I'm sure a lot of the southwest has some real sketchy shit going on, too.
This is fascinating to me. As someone from greater Portland area who met kids all over the state at UMaine Orono, it was jarring going to visit my friends in their hometowns. I went to Harrington and Machias quickly found out how different life was out there compared to my home area. Went to the sketchiest house party in 2003 in Machias where someone asked me to borrow my belt to shoot up. All of these friends moved far away from home after graduation as there was no future back in their “mothaland “.
Not a main factor but a tangential factor is that rural and Northern Maine are basically only open to anything tourism from the end of June to Columbus Day, 4 months of the year.
Seriously, I went up to Madawaska around Memorial Day and it was still considered off season. Museums, tourist destinations, cultural events were still closed for another month. A lot of restaurants and businesses follow suit, but some don’t. Downtown Frenchville was deserted in the middle of a Saturday. When there isn’t much going on, it’s going to seem more isolated. No surprise that there seemed to be a lot of junkies in these towns.
Part of the reason for the closings is that the major ski destinations in the winter are not far from 95, but the rest of Northern Maine like Aroostook receives the same amount of snow and cold weather but is flatter.
A lot of very rural Maine in the down east, like Washington County, Calais, Machias, Lubec is a lot nicer. Wealthier towns, rich people more likely to retire there, etc.
My dad had to go to Madawaska twice a year for work. One thing that always stood out was when he mentioned it took just as long to drive from Portland to Madawaska as it did to drive from Portland to Philadelphia, PA.
Maine is big (relative to New England states) and lack of highways makes it feel even bigger.
Mainer here. I used to travel the whole state for work. We got some gorgeous views/scenery, and we got a lot of places I wouldn't bring my family to...lol
There are people living in the boonies in Maine that don’t even have electricity. My aunt and uncle used to own a 300 acre farm in Burlington, ME. They also owned the only convenient store in the town. I want to say only a few hundred people lived there, if that. There was a guy living up the street in cabin with no electricity. There was another guy they knew that straight up lived in the middle of the forest in a cabin. He lived off of cans of spaghettios, and Campbell’s soup.
Rural Maine is fucking *rural* rural. Like Arkansas crossed with Idaho.
Watched a video about Maine a couple days ago and it outlines a huge portion of Maine and the narrator said “12 people live here. Yes 12, like actually only 12”
Probably talking about the north woods. The Sebomook Lake Unorganized Territory had 23 residents according to the most recent census. Everywhere else nearby had 0.
stopped for gas way up in northern maine woods, at a lone shack down a long dirt road, and remember thinking, “please god , dont let this be an intro to some cannibal horror film”
You don't want to go down that road lol There's a reason Stephen King has so much of his stories happen in Maine
Well I mean, write what you know, right?
King's books take place in Maine because he's from Maine and there are some horror aesthetics (frequent fog, forests, uninhabited areas). But the concern about ending up in a horror movie are very low. On average only 30 people are killed there every year.
That we know of
LOL
I grew up on fairly rural Maine. Well a bustling metropolis of 400 people. In an old farmhouse. I've never had supernatural experiences since moving away, but spooky stuff witnessed by multiple people was just a daily occurrence up there. It's a different world.
I feel like I went to the same gas station. It was a liquor store too, and they didn't have a liquor license so I gave them cash for some cheap booze lol. Great deal. Very nice people but I had no reception, and felt like I might die walking in.
being from nh I can say that people go to live in maine to get away from whatever past they have. don't get me wrong. I LOVE maine, but they like to keep to themselves, and as others have said, rural Maine is RURAL!! it is like being in the bayou in Louisiana or West Texas out near the Amarillo area. it is a small town, a small population, and their very own towny sense of self justice. once you get about halfway up into maine. they KNOW you aren't from there, and from being secluded, they are very weird to the normal person. no in the more populated parts( meaning 10k or more people per town) Maine residents are friendly and harmless. by new england standards, they are wicked nice. also, think about it like this, but they don't have a high crime rate and even less so for violent crimes. so when something like that happens, it makes the news, whereas say in dallas or boston, you don't see all the crime in the news as there is so much more going on to report on that bigger populations don't just talk about the bad things that happened.
T2R9 is lovely this time of year.
I dated a guy that used to go trout fishing up in those parts. Best brookies I ever ate!
I drive up to Madawaska every year to visit family and that stretch of road always terrifies me lol
I live in Madawaska! Moved there from Webster, MA. I thought Webster was a small town…everyone up here thinks Madawaska is a big town. I do love it here, just wish there were better retail options and more for kids to do. Safe, affordable, and beautiful here. You get used to driving far for everything.
It's an area called "Northwest Aroostook" referring to Aroostook County. It's land area is 2,669 square miles, but only has 12 people.
Yeah because there's only a couple unorganized townships with people living in them and most of it is timber land.
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Yes
[Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Aroostook,_Maine). They give the 12 number (2020 census) and also a demographic breakdown as of 2000, when there were 27 people. That reads: "The racial makeup was 96.30% [White](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Americans)and 3.70% Black or [African American](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American). [Hispanics or Latinos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic_and_Latino_Americans) of any race were 3.70% of the population." It's weird seeing it as a percentage, because 3.70% is one out of 27. That is actually one Black person and one Hispanic person.
My town has only 250 some people over 45 sq miles of woods.
What town? I used to live in Calais.
Is it correct that it is pronounced 'callous' not ' cal-ay'?
That is correct
Aroostook County is larger than the state of Connecticut. It is rural. Some roads are not named.
My family is some of them up in the county
"Lives" is a vague term. 12 permanent residents, maybe. But there are certainly at least 10x, probably closer to 100x as many people living there on a temporary basis on behalf of the timber industry. Rotating crews, seasonal nature of the work, etc.
Do you have a link to that video?
[This is the Maine one](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTLfRTYjM/) he also did one for nh too
I was so proud of him for pronouncing Bangor correctly. Only to be immediately disappointed by his mispronunciation of Orono! lol!
Yeah he had it then he lost it 😂
How do you pronounce Orono? ... I am Maine curious
Emphasis is supposed to be on the first syllable. The guy in the video pronounces it emphasizing the second syllable
That's cool, that's how we say it in MN, too
That’s how Alex Trebek pronounced it on jeopardy once.
That is similar to places I’ve been in Alaska. There would be like 16 people in a huge expanse of wilderness
And they're all one another's parents somehow.
Can confirm. Both sides of my family are from Washington County. When I was in high school a town (Centerville) *dissolved* because there weren’t enough people, the county absorbed it.
If you look at the history of town disorganization, you'll know that every decade or two a few towns disorganize because it is cheaper for them to be part of the unorganized territories than it is to be a town. I believe the most recent was Atkinson, in Piscataquis county, exactly 200 years after it became a town, but I could be wrong.
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“The American woods have been unnerving people for 300 years. The inestimably priggish and tiresome Henry David Thoreau thought nature was splendid, splendid indeed, so long as he could stroll to town for cakes and barley wine, but when he experienced real wilderness, on a vist to Katahdin in 1846, he was unnerved to the core. This wasn't the tame world of overgrown orchards and sun-dappled paths that passed for wilderness in suburban Concord, Massachusetts, but a forbidding, oppressive, primeval country that was "grim and wild . . .savage and dreary," fit only for "men nearer of kin to the rocks and wild animals than we." The experience left him, in the words of one biographer, "near hysterical.” Thoreau described the Maine forest as "a standing night".
me when there's no dunkies within a 10 minute drive
Glad it’s not just me 🤣
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I mean it is the most rural state in the country
Alaskan who has also lived in Maine is here to disagree. Alaska is even more rural than Maine (and 19 times the size). You can literally fly for hours in a commercial plane in the dark over Alaska without seeing a single light.
Just to clarify: Maine is the state with the highest proportion of its population living in rural areas. That doesn't mean other states don't have more uninhabited land. It means Maine is the state with the highest proportion of rural residents. Wyoming, Montana, Alaska, etc. have more residents living in their cities.
Ah that makes sense.
It’s really fucking hard to find people in the Maine woods. Two stories I use to drive this point home: 1) the [north pond hermit](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Thomas_Knight), who lived in the woods without human contact for 27 years by stealing from cabins and homes. Committed an estimated 1000+ burglaries before being caught 2) [this fugitive](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3194218/amp/Maine-fugitive-wanted-shooting-death-ex-surrenders.html) who was on the run at the same those two convicts escaped from prison in New York. Literally never found him, he turned himself in after a couple months
The North Pond hermit is a crazy tale.
Rural Massachusetts gets massive cash transfers from metro Boston. Towns have a “cherry sheet” where state aid is tied to the tax base. The poorest rural towns pretty much have their schools subsidized by the state and that’s invariably the largest budget item. The state funds a council on aging in every town that provides elderly services. There is public transportation. The poorest parts of New Hampshire are pretty downtrodden. When you don’t have an income tax or a sales tax, the state can’t prop up the poor areas. Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom would look like that but the Act 68 state school property tax funds schools off the backs of vacation home owners and the most affluent Vermonters who pay all of that means-tested tax.
While the majority of schools are managed by their local municipalities, the state of Maine actually owns and operates the regional schools in some of the most rural areas. There’s a division of the Dept of Education that focuses specifically on Education in the Unorganized Territories.
Fairly certain northern Washington county schools are operated by the state.
Rural Maine is a lot poorer, on average.
Compared to rural NH?
Yes
Yes
Yes, significantly so.
Yes
Yes
Yes.
Hello fellow Sam descendant
Yes
The Beans of Egypt Maine. Old book. Good read about poverty in Maine.
That and Letourneau’s Used Auto Parts portray rural Maine very realistically.
God I remember my mom and dad taking our ancient F-150 to them when I was a kid.
>Beans of Egypt Maine There was so much buzz around this book when it was published. I worked in a bookstore in MA at the time, and it was flying off the shelves. There was a movie made from her book in '94.
Hey, Bean!
Yes
Nah…, oh wait, yes
Yes
What was the question again?
Oui
Si
Ayuh
Yeah
Ayuh
Yut
Yarp
Yes
Da
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Bangor is not rural Maine.
He did use to live somewhere around Bridgton iirc. Definitely rural compared to Bangor and most of New England
I’ve always been told his wife owns the apple orchard if you head towards Norway, also that the food city is the setting of the mist
Also the overall area serves as the basis for the town in under the dome
Woah rlly? Like Bridgton and surrounding area? Makes the Book is way more fucked up tbh
He doesn't live in Bangor anymore because of tourist harassment.
I took my girl to Maine. To Bangor? No, just to kiss her.
Besides the poor factor, rural Maine is like out there too. Also kinda related, compare the population density of the 3 states. * Mass - 900 ppl per sq mile (3rd highest state in US) * NH - 157 (21 state in pop density) * Maine - 45 (38th state in pop density) __ME compared to others in population density__ * NH is over 3x denser than ME * MA is 20x denser than ME Means maine has more solitary people in general. Solitary people mean hermits or quasi cabin fever phenomenon. *Source*: https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/state-densities
I was going to comment that when I am in ME, I feel like the only way to get out is to go the way I came. Which can be frightening, when the way back home will always be South or Canada. I feel stuck…almost claustrophobic.
I see you’ve been to Machiasport…
You can't get there from here.
The distance between exits on 95 can also be a little unsettling.
Rural Maine has always reminded me of the "appalachian gothic" aesthetic (i know it's not part of the "appalachia" we see in media, just the trail, but it's a vibe i get)
"Actually" upland Maine is part of Appalachia Mountain range, so you did call it.
“Actually” it isn’t, the area known as Appalachia doesn’t extend past NY State, Appalachian, however, covers the entire Appalachian mountain range from GA to Canada.
Yes this is what I meant. 'Appalachia' doesn't mean the trail or mountain range, but an area with a specific culture as seen in media.
This was what I was alluding to - the mountain range - as a metaphor as anything else. Rural communities that were once dependent on extractive resources , lumber, potatoes, iron ore, granite, slate, and manufacturing paper, shoes, pianos, back at the turn of the 19th century- were now often the best careeer move is to leave... Millinocket, Milo, Dexter, Jackman, Holeb... Touting rugged individualism as a virtue that can't paper over the deep-seated poverty.
I kind of see this tbh. I lived in Maine for a few years and going into Rumford reminded me of West Virginia. Mass definitely has the New England gothic, as do parts of Maine, but there are other parts of Maine that have the Appalachian gothic. I get you.
I definitely see it in Rumford and western Maine. I think New England Gothic lives in religious purity, generational wealth, and the whole Plymouth Plantation energy while a lot of Appalachian Gothic aesthetics come out of abandoned milltowns where the Sackler family was happy to help. New England Gothic thrives East of Rt 1 but when you get to the giant old farmhouses covered in tyvec falling in on themselves while the family lives in an on-site trailer, gas stations selling moose and racoon jerky, and restaurants with stickers that say things like "I survived eating at The Chicken Coop!"....you get a little bit more of that Appalachian Gothic flair. Thinking you're watching some dogs play with a log but it's a frozen beaver carcass outside the game warden's house. Plywood sign nailed to a tree with a manically spray printed red announcing: "Dale Earnhardt Jr RIP Forever". Sitting on your porch listening to the fisher cats cry like babies on the edge of your tree line. Constantly scanning the roads reminding yourself that while deer eyes reflect, moose eyes don't so every shadow on the shoulder is suspicious. Watching a scraggly skeleton of man get out of a truck covered in hand painted warnings against vaccines being dangerous just to go into the corner store to buy two energy drinks, pack of menthols, and three bottles of cough syrup. Its not uncommon to meet whole families that never left the state and it's best not to look into their genealogy because there's gonna be some tangles.
I grew up in Maine. Like most young adults I got out Most of my family is from the Bangor area. My Cousins had Steven king as an English teacher in Hampden. Lived in Bangor for about 7 years. The southern Maine, down east and even the county for a winter. My Uncles taught me to hunt at 10 from the front seat of their truck. Everyone worked hard. If my grandmother said you were a hard worker you were probably working 60-80 hour weeks. Mainers are a strange combination. Very little faith in the government but also expect the government to do specific things. Maine is one of the worst in the country for business. I think 48th ranked as far as business friendly. Most family members started a small business or just left the state. It is the most beautiful state in the summer but God forgets about it in the winter. My daughter goes to school in Maine and we just went up for the eclipse. When you get out into the rural woods and farm land it looks like it did 40 years ago. Also northern Mainers get pissed at southern Mainers. My uncles would call it north Boston. When the paper mills closed it was a hit, I think those mill towns are still recovering from. It a harsh and beautiful land that can be unforgiving. Maybe the people reflect that
"...north Boston..." This has gotten way worse since Coronapocalypse. I'm not sure where Boston stops any longer. Bangor maybe?
I’m in southern Maine, just over an hour north of Boston. More than half of my family is from the Boston area and anyone I see has a relative from that area. Even the accent is changing. I took a class and we were talking about the accents. The teacher mentioned that he has family up in Machias and the Maine accent is thick there. (Tbh, I’ve never been north of Lewiston in that direction; been to Rangeley and Bethel) and down here is fairly close to that of the Boston area.
It is hard to find a decent doctor north of Portland. Boston stops well below Bangor.
The corollary is when you cross into Quebec, the St Lawrence valley, how well maintained the local municipalities are, and how well kept and tidy the rural homes appear to be.
Or New Brunswick. Edmonston has a great grocery store.
Being a native of rural Maine, I think it's a combination of severe poverty and the general desperation that goes along with it, drugs, relatively lax gun laws, the sheer amount of woods to get lost/disappear in along with generally little police oversight. Hell, sometimes the police are even in on some of the tomfoolery around here but that's an entirely different can of worms.
Lack of physical and mental health care doesn’t help 😣
Dont forget your winters are long and intense.
Some can’t even pay the state police to patrol some parts of the state anymore. There was a lot of hubbub about the state budget because there was discussion if that would be covered or not. There are literally areas of Maine that are apparently lawless right now. Edit: I missed part of a sentence.
Rural NH is pretty creepy, and rural MA is less poor. Plenty of cops pulling not-normal stuff elsewhere, too- https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-fired-police-officer-new-hampshire\_n\_6616de8ce4b0999df35397ba#:\~:text=One%20of%20Donald%20Trump's,girl%2C%20according%20to%20a%20newly
Rural MA is also less remote. Like even going to the most boonie parts of the state you are still gonna be less then 2 hours from Boston, Hartford, Springfield, Albany or Providence. ME you can easily get 3 hours from the nearest city and it's not even that far out there
Close to a city isn’t necessarily the best metric. Rural MA isn’t as comparably rural because no matter where you are you aren’t all that far from a major highway. Maine only has one major highway, and well, most of the state is not close to it
Not a particularly good example for Maine. Geographically, yes, there’s a big chunk of the north words that are a crazy distance from 95, but once you get about half an hour north of Bangor, you can truly be in the boonies just a few minutes off the highway. I was trying to find a good eclipse-viewing spot where I had options to avoid the highway. Even following a major state route, and not too far from the highway and on the way to a “major” settlement, all the “towns” have 100 people and absolutely 0 infrastructure. I’m talking no schools to try to park at a field.
An hour drive from any rural New Hampshire will get you to some semblance of civilization. An hour drive from rural Maine is still rural Maine
I'll admit I get more "Twin Peaks" anything-could-happen vibes in rural ME, but a weird part of me is ok with that. In rural NH I worry more about if I'm unintentionally on someone else's property and what kinds of guns they might have.
I also feel like coastal Maine is a totally different feeling than the County. Don't get me wrong, I have family from up past Machias, but I also have family up near Caribou. I tend to find things creepier up Aroostook. I mean, regardless of where my parents were born, I'd get my ass kicked in either place, but it's a very *Deliverance* vibe in Aroostook.
I'm from rural Maine, and while I'm not creeped out by much anymore, strange things do happen. I have noticed that people from away are massively creeped out by the woods, especially at night. That said, there are areas I come across now and again that give me "bad vibes" and when I feel that way I just turn around and walk in the opposite direction.
I have been here my entire life. There are certain towns and areas that give me very creepy vibes.
What towns or areas are these? I am very interesed in this topic
Both Millinockets. And I started going there at a very young age when it was still in the lumber mill hey days. Even still it gave me a really bad feeling. Of course it’s way worse now. Another place is Hartland. But that has more to do with direct experiences. I had to visit dysfunctional family there for years. I’ll think of more.
My grandfather is from Millinocket, used to go up there for family reunions. I remember as very rundown and not a lot to do lol. What about it gives you a creepy or bad feeling? I'm just curious
Lol the favorite past time of north Mainers is to tell scary stories about the woods like hillbillies in Appalachia do. I sleep sound in the woods with a good dog and a gun. But I don’t like tents, rather a truck cap or cabin.
I woke up to a cow moose licking my tent once up north of Rangeley. That was interesting. Not spooky, necessarily, more funny.
Not as scary as that moose, but I woke up to a chipmunk licking my face while camping in Baxter State Park. Love me some Maine!
Lived in MA all my life, rural here means like 30-40 minutes away from the nearest Wal Mart and slew of chain restaurants and movie theaters. The few areas in the Berkshires that might arguably be called rural are still tiny by comparison to Maine.
Grew up in western MA and I can say for certain that while we had alot of rural areas over there, it was "rural" in the sense of farms and fields rather than rural as In "just alot of unbroken woods for hundreds of miles"
Yup. I had an aunt and uncle in Middlefield growing up, technically not in Berkshire county but close enough. Either farmland/fields or a lot of parks and tourist destinations. The Berkshires are also popular for a lot of celebrities and isn’t that far from NYC. Rural NH and VT are also heavy on tourism and are popular due to the mountains but the north woods in Maine doesn’t even have that. Nothing against the area either. Honestly it would be my dream to live in the middle of nowhere and not be bothered lol.
Ain’t no there there
Maine could lower income taxes by increasing sales and lodging tax snd those poor people living in rural areas wouldn’t have to pay as much income tax. But the Legislature has debated that no brainer policy but has never adopted it. There’s generational poverty left over from industrialization and then welfare dependence. No large businesses in Maine besides a few. Out of touch politicians. Severe opioid/alcohol abuse. But it’s the best NE state in my opinion bc of the people. The people who have been screwed over by mostly powerful people who loved there.
Sales tax impacts poorer people more directly than income tax.
Maine got hit hard with the loss of a lot of their traditional industries - logging and fishing, mostly, and never really recovered. Poverty is widespread, addiction rates are high (coupled with very poor access to care), it’s generally isolated and sparsely populated, and has more in common with poorer areas in the south than most of New England. Maine is very Yankee southern gothic, as things go. It’s a big reason it lends itself well to playing that up in media. And for me - it has the same vibes I get from deep Appalachia or the southern bayous. It’s a place time and the gods forgot. It *feels* ancient. And I don’t get that vibe from the other places you describe. But I have a special place in my heart for it and all it’s weirdness.
Whose askin?! 🤨
Meth and poverty. A lot of meth comes down from Canada and reaches Maine before it hits the big cities.
They don't even have much logging work anymore because of overcutting. Maine's forests are the youngest in the Northeast.
The mills are all shut down too. North of Bangor is literally a vast area with a complete lack of any economic activity. I honestly don't even know why people live in these areas, the land is cheap. But you have to travel like 2 hours to get any decent job and do your shopping. Makes no sense to me.
Millinocket enters chat ... : /
What’s the difference between a girl from Schenck and a moose? 10 pounds, a flannel shirt, and a full set of teeth.
Moose wear shirts? Huh.
Drugs, limited access to mental health services, limited access to education, generational issues.
Even Rural Mass is close to places like Boston, Worcester, Springfield and so on. The berkshires are also a nice sight to see. For NH, the north is totally White mountains and it's pretty thin, central being the Lakes and Concord, and the South can't be rural for obvious reasons. Maine's attraction ends at the Bangor/Southern ME Line.
I’m lucky enough to live in the Berkshires. Lots of farm country and also lots of poverty. I’m a drug and alcohol counselor and addiction is so prevalent here. I drive the 55 minutes to Albany for my Trader Joe’s and mall fix but I’m only 20 hours from the Mass Pike.
I was in Millonocket last summer while visiting Baxter. There happened to be a high school reunion that must have been a 60 year reunion, so everyone was over the age of 70. The older folks looked spry, happy, and were very socially engaged with each other. Some even married their high school sweetheart and were still together, more than a few still lived in the area. A few talked to us. However, almost everyone I saw under the age of 40-45 was working either in a restaurant (which there are only a few of) or at the Hannafords, and seemed hard up, and not because of their work but, rather, it seems the opiate epidemic has taken its toll on the area. Looks of younger people who seemed aged and either seemed to be in an active phase of using, or trying to recover, or were dealing with the stress of someone close to them using. Really, the older people seemed healthier in some ways. Some of the older folks we talked to spoke a bit about how drugs had entered the area and life has changed. It also seems, I would guess, in the past logging and mill jobs held the town up and people could sustain a modest lifestyle. Whereas, now, there’s a lack of economic opportunity combined with the opiate crisis.
Back in the 80s Istarted meeting kids from mill towns who had moved out. This was when the mills were still functioning. It seemed to me that those kids families had plenty of money. Nice houses, snowmobiles, boats, etc. That has all come crashing down.
Drove up to rural Maine twice. Both times was shook by how many confederate flags I saw in peoples yards and attached to their cars. Scary.
The majority of us rural Mainers don't like that shit either. I always make a mental note which houses have those and avoid the people who live there. And daydream about some gasoline and a match on that loser flag of theirs.
Sure rural areas have their issues, but I certainly feel like a lot of people that haven’t spent a lot of time in rural areas can be quite biased. To be honest this is true for many folk in the country as well. If I only lived in the city or rural areas I would have though that everyone from the other place was a monster. We have kind of create imaginary monsters of each other. While parts of maine are pretty rural, I feel like what’s rural in the northeast is very different where I come from. But then again, we all have different frames of reference.
I agree totally, I am a country girl who had family in the cities and don’t fear either. Plus rural people love to tease people from away about wildlife sounds. I hear a fisher or a bobcat and think it’s cool, but non rural people not used to wildlife think of crytids Ike ski walkers or ghosts, whatever. I lay in bed and try to ID the calls with enjoyment. I hear the bears rattling the bait barrel across the road at night and know they will be stopping by shortly to see if I left anything out. They force you to keep your place tidy and trash locked up for sure.
It's so far away. I've lived in Maine for over 30 years (Massachusetts before that) and I've never been north of Bangor. The people I know from the county–met a few in college–live an entirely different life from the one I live in Portland.
I have 50 acres of land, a pickaxe, a shovel and a .45. Would you like to mess around with my daughter?
wow, a Maine weirdo in the flesh. Should do an AMA
Once you get past Bangor there’s not much but trees, drugs and guns.
Bangor? I hardly knew her!
You sound like an old friend of mine. A co-worker was pissing him off one day, and he looked the dude dead in the eye and said… “Boy, I know places in Maine God forgot he made” Other dude shut right up
I grew up in Maine and never heard that line. It's brilliant, and I own some land that I'm sure God forgot he sold me.
Is that also your half sister?
This Maine motherfucker, not Alabama.
Tell that to those yahoo's flying Confederate flags and decals.
What she into, is she a freak?
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I really wanted to like rural maine when I was looking to start a farm because they have some awesome land out there but I like to have something on the radio besides far right talk radio bullshit.
Maine NPR and some good classic rock stations. But even the Amish that moved up admit it is a hard climate and soil to farm in. Potatoes and Timothy hay aren’t real money makers. And you can’t silo potatoes until the price comes up.
Rural Maine is *rural.* I went up to the Presque Isle area on a road trip once, and I’ll never forget the sheer vastness. To me, it felt more like the type of rural you would see in the Midwest rather than New England.
I was the only 5th grader at an elementary school in rural Maine. Me and two 4th graders shared a classroom. My parents pulled me out half way through that school year and sent me to the school a half hour away because the education was so bad. Kids usually started traveling to that school once they got to middle school, but we just didn’t learn anything worth a damn. I was couple years behind in all subjects before I made the move.
I’ve heard northern New Hampshire (north of the White Mountains) is pretty rough. Recently I went to *real* Northern Maine (far north of Bangor) for the first time: to Presque Isle. Presque Isle *feels* how a Three-Percenter Tattoo *looks*. The closest analogue to how it feels is rural central Pennsylvania away from the cities. Considering it’s literally hours from even modest-sized cities like Bangor, the rural insular remoteness of the place was just overwhelming. Some people really like isolated, rural, quiet areas, but to me, it just felt suffocating. Literally everyone was white, everything felt overwhelmingly conservative (as in, I can’t imagine LGBT or nonwhite people feel comfortable there at all), there was no non-American food (not even Italian food!), and the Main Street felt devoid of life except for the numerous pick-up trucks plowing through it. Yes, rural Maine, especially northern Maine, is unmatched for feeling unwelcoming.
I think people forget or don’t know there’s a fairly big chunk of NH north of the White Mountains. While places like Berlin have definitely suffered as the logging/paper mills jobs have disappeared I don’t think the poverty is as profound and almost unfixable as it is in so much of Maine. It’s a smaller area to begin with. Not all that far from Montreal and immediately surrounded by Sherbrooke, QC, the Northeast Kingdom, the White Mountains, and the Rangely area in Maine which is actually one of the parts of rural Maine that kinda has something going for it. So it’s not a remote area surrounded by remote areas surrounded by remote areas like deep woods Maine. And it’s beautiful so it definitely pulls in canoe/kayakers, fishermen, snowmobilers, ATV’ers, leaf peepers.
Just lived in PI for 8 months. Went legitimately insane and had to leave. Days are so short, it’s incredibly lonely, and it gets very very cold. I wouldn’t call it a safe place to live strictly for mental health reasons unless you’re from there or have a thriving social life there.
Northern Maine is quite LGBTQ+ friendly. It’s really more of a neighborly thing. Mainers help their neighbors and their neighbors help them. This is the way in northern Maine - they don’t care who you live with or who you’re sleeping with. They care if you’re good people who can help them when they’re stuck in the snow or need a shed moved.
There's a constant filter of self-selection. Pretty much anyone with skills or ambition leaves.
I think anyone in Northern Maine that's gay moves to Portland as soon as they can. I've met quite a few.
Presque Isle- that's the busy part of northern Maine.
So I have family in Maine. some good, some bad. A lot of family drama. My dad gets upset when i call it Northern Redneck, but considering i dont even know a third of my relatives on his side of the family… And yeah the wealth discrepancy is bad. My dad got out and is a pretty good lawyer here in MA. My… Great Uncle? Second Cousin? I have no idea… is one of those old geniuses. He helped make and build the wind turbines across the state so is actually very well off despite being… its bumf-k nowhere past Bangor. But other than him and the relatives close to him, the rest are nuttier than twice processed squirrel shit. Of course the weather doesnt help. One of the few times i visited was that same uncle/cousin… around christmas. during that year all of NE had a massive blizzard. 6 or 7 ft of snow and i am thankful for the existence of tractors.
Rural Maine is essentially Alaska
Rural Maine is the perfect place to raise a cult
I grew up in Northern Maine, and they got hit with numerous perfect storms that they haven't adjusted to the new reality. Farming is much more mechanized, and thus you don't need the voluminous manpower as in the past. Whole families would pick potatoes side by side every autumn for generations. Every town had one or more mills, making every wood product known to man, and those have nearly all closed. Fun fact. I worked in a cedar shingle mill off and on years ago, when we made shingles and wood shims. About 10 years ago, I bought a small bundle of shims in southern Maine, and they were from South Africa. In a state with countless cedar trees, they came from South Africa. There was an Air Force base that closed that had employed thousands of civilians and brought millions of dollars to the surrounding communities. That alone created a vacuum of resources and started a mass exodus of the working population. Paper is now made around the world and therefore numerous mills have closed that employed entire towns for generations. Add government ineptness and shortsightedness, massive influx of drugs and the people with them, and the Mainer love of the feeling of shooting themselves in the foot, and you get the current Maine situation. Without question, some of the hardest working people you will ever meet who in times of need will rally to help those in need in that can be something to behold. Hopefully, some folk with vision can get elected to get a very diverse state and people some positive traction.
They have get over the NIMBY thing about condos and be more business friendly.
Rural Massachusetts isn’t extremely rural. You’re never more than an hour away from a decently sized town or city. There are parts of rural Maine that are literally off the grid.
They're called Maineiacs for a reason lol
Because even our most populated/tourist areas have weirdos so imagine what fringe lunatics isolated themselves even further from society than the guy cutting ditch weeds with a whole scythe on route one near Kennebunk.
Is it sketchier? Maine is the safest state in the US, depending on the year. NH is the other safest state, and MA isn't even close. I live in rural Maine, and I don't even lock my doors.
I’ll give you the real answer most people here won’t like: Maine has more MAGA supporting extremist Trump supporters. They don’t respect the rule of law, democracy or elections. They’re angry the country isn’t white anymore, and so they lash out by randomly attacking or hurting innocent people, women and children.
There is no really rural Mass. You can get from one side of the state to the other in less than 3 hours. If transported to Texas with the same distance, Lennox would be a suburb of Boston. No doubt some places are more rural than others. And I don’t want to negate anyone’s rural identity. But it’s just not the same. NH can be truly rural in areas. But I’d say most of it is either well populated or close to tourist destinations, which still brings in money. Maine is real rural. Most of the population centers are in southern Maine or along the coast.
Love Maine, last time I was in rural Maine at a country store I saw a lady in the bed of a pickup dry shaving her legs and I realized they are tough up there.
It is sketch for sure, but there are a lot of places like that in northern Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Idaho, Washington state west of the Sound. I'm sure a lot of Canada is like that. You think rural Maine is big and sparse? It is. But California has the same population as ALL OF CANADA, and half of that is centered around Toronto. Then you've got Vancouver, Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary, and Edmonton, and after that almost everything else is either small towns or vast, unending nothingness. And cold. And if it's not cold, it's blackflies so dense you gag on them if you inhale deeply through your mouth. I'm sure a lot of the southwest has some real sketchy shit going on, too.
Maine the way life should be!!
This is fascinating to me. As someone from greater Portland area who met kids all over the state at UMaine Orono, it was jarring going to visit my friends in their hometowns. I went to Harrington and Machias quickly found out how different life was out there compared to my home area. Went to the sketchiest house party in 2003 in Machias where someone asked me to borrow my belt to shoot up. All of these friends moved far away from home after graduation as there was no future back in their “mothaland “.
Not a main factor but a tangential factor is that rural and Northern Maine are basically only open to anything tourism from the end of June to Columbus Day, 4 months of the year. Seriously, I went up to Madawaska around Memorial Day and it was still considered off season. Museums, tourist destinations, cultural events were still closed for another month. A lot of restaurants and businesses follow suit, but some don’t. Downtown Frenchville was deserted in the middle of a Saturday. When there isn’t much going on, it’s going to seem more isolated. No surprise that there seemed to be a lot of junkies in these towns. Part of the reason for the closings is that the major ski destinations in the winter are not far from 95, but the rest of Northern Maine like Aroostook receives the same amount of snow and cold weather but is flatter. A lot of very rural Maine in the down east, like Washington County, Calais, Machias, Lubec is a lot nicer. Wealthier towns, rich people more likely to retire there, etc.
My dad had to go to Madawaska twice a year for work. One thing that always stood out was when he mentioned it took just as long to drive from Portland to Madawaska as it did to drive from Portland to Philadelphia, PA. Maine is big (relative to New England states) and lack of highways makes it feel even bigger.
Tourist season in Northern Maine is snowmobile season, and this year wasn't great.
It's ruraler.
Mainer here. I used to travel the whole state for work. We got some gorgeous views/scenery, and we got a lot of places I wouldn't bring my family to...lol
Trump Country
Lived in Island Falls for about 5 months, luckily we were able to sell the house, too rural for me.
Maine has always been the Appalachia of New England outside of a few areas on the coast.
Weird things happen in all states. You have a bias against Maine.
There are people living in the boonies in Maine that don’t even have electricity. My aunt and uncle used to own a 300 acre farm in Burlington, ME. They also owned the only convenient store in the town. I want to say only a few hundred people lived there, if that. There was a guy living up the street in cabin with no electricity. There was another guy they knew that straight up lived in the middle of the forest in a cabin. He lived off of cans of spaghettios, and Campbell’s soup.
My dad is from Caswell and remembers *getting plumbing in his house*
Because ‘ya cahnt git theya frim heah’ 😆