Maine entered the Union as the twenty-third state, on March 15, 1820.
Located in the extreme northeastern corner of the United States, Maine
is the most easterly state and ranks thirty-ninth in size among the fifty.
It is bordered by Canada, New Hampshire, and the Atlantic Ocean.
As early as 1600, English expeditions began fishing the Gulf of
Maine. Within thirty years, there were English settlements on several of
the many islands off the coast, as well as along mainland Maine’s coastline. The government of Massachusetts Bay Colony began taking over
the small settlements in 1652, and Maine became a district of
Massachusetts in 1691. For the first hundred years of Maine’s settlement, its economy was based on fishing, farming, trading, and forestry.
Textile mills and shoe factories were built in Maine between 1830
and 1860, but it was papermaking that brought lively new industry to
the state after the American Civil War (1861–65). Until then, paper had
been made from rags (cloth), but a new process replaced rags with wood
pulp. By 1900, Maine was a leader in the paper-making industry, and
continues into the twenty-first century.
Maine was home to more than 1.3 million people in 2006. The
majority (96.6 percent) of the population was white. The next largest
ethnic group was Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (0.8 percent), then
African American (0.7 percent). Thirty percent of the population was
between the ages of forty-five and sixty-four.
Maine was a state of Republicans for the first hundred years after its
formation in the 1850s, but that changed as more French-Canadian voters migrated to the state. Twenty-first century Maine is largely a
Democratic state.
The economy of Maine depends heavily upon its natural resources.
The state’s largest industry during the first decade of the twenty-first century was paper manufacturing, which relies on forests and water power.
Other manufacturing includes wood products, footwear, shipbuilding,
and electronic components. Although agriculture is not a leading industry in Maine, the state does produce more food crops for human consumption than any other state in New England.
There are no professional sports teams in Maine, but the state hosts
millions of tourists each year, most of whom arrive in the months of July,
August, and September. Visitors enjoy the area’s beaches, and activities such as hunting, sailing, and skiing are popular.