Maine Fact Sheet

Tasty Planet – Maine Fact Sheet (courtesy of Wikipedia)

Capital: Augusta

Largest City: Portland

Largest and the northernmost state in the New England region

Bordered on the west by New Hampshire

The only state that borders just one other state

The easternmost state in the contiguous 48 states

The most sparsely populated state east of the Mississippi River

Its land mass exceeds that of all other New England states combined

The Pine Tree State (90% of its land is forest)

Geologists describe Maine’s coastal landscape as a drowned coast, where a rising sea level has invaded former land features, creating bays out of valleys and islands out of mountain tops

Suffering partly from rising sea level and its invasion of some former land features

Maine's Acadia National Park is the only national park in New England

Continental climate: Temperatures Farenheit (20s/10s in winter, -10 Celsius; 80s/90s in summer, + 30 Celsius)

Original inhabitants of the territory that is now Maine were Algonquian-speaking peoples including the Wabanaki, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscots

The first European settlement in Maine was in 1604 by a French party that included Samuel de Champlain, the noted explorer

The French named the area that includes Maine as Acadia

96.5% White

Maine is second only to New Hampshire in the percentage of French Canadians in a U.S. state

Highest percentage of current French-speakers

Per capita personal income for 2003 was US$29,164, 29th in the nation

Maine's agricultural outputs are seafood (notably lobsters), poultry and eggs, dairy products, cattle, blueberries, apples, and maple sugar

Western Maine aquifers and springs are a major source of bottled water

Industrial outputs consist of mainly paper, lumber and wood products, electronic equipment, leather products, food products, textiles, and bio-technology, naval shipbuilding and construction