Maine
Discover Maine
Introduction
Maine is the largest of the New England states and the emptiest, with more forest than any other state in the country and a population smaller than most American cities. Almost everything a visitor comes for sits on the coast, but the coast is longer than it looks: measured around every inlet and peninsula it runs to some 3,500 miles, against about 230 as the crow flies.
The south is beach country — Kittery, Ogunquit, Kennebunkport and Old Orchard Beach — where wide sand, outlet shopping and amusement piers draw the summer crowds. Portland, halfway up, is the working city: a real fishing port with a restaurant scene that outgrew the state some time ago.
North and east of it the shoreline turns to granite and spruce. This is the Maine of the postcards — islands, lighthouses and working lobster harbours — and it culminates at Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island, with Bar Harbor at its gate.
Inland, the north is forest, lakes and logging roads, rising to Mount Katahdin, where the Appalachian Trail ends after 2,000 miles.
