Ya know what's good in Maine, also more than a stone's throw from you? Those schooner tours and excursions. Rockland?
I wish I had pulled it up and posted it when i read it but a few days ago there was an article about how some of Maine’s towns are drying up. Other than an article about Dennysville, I can’t seem to find it now.
Often, there's a bit of hype in these stories. Certainly, when you have a town, like Millinocket, that grew up around a paper mill, and the paper mill employed more than three-quarters of its employed residents, either directly or indirectly, that town is going to get smaller when the mill closes. But that doesn't mean that the town is drying up or being abandoned. People who grow up here tend to retire here, so kids who left Maine to work or to go to college, after high school, given that the paper mill quit hiring people for a couple of decades before closing entirely, often move back to town when they retire or find themselves in a position where they can earn a living here. Commonly, they spend their working lives in another state, where they raise their families, then retire to Millinocket. Others move here because it's a beautiful area, at the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. Some very small towns, far away from larger towns, might become more or less ghost towns when their local industries close. Maine's government has been working very hard to force the closure of its forest products industry, so even smaller lumber mills are closing. As fewer young people hunt or engage in outdoor activities, they tend to move away from these small towns. Yet, we have several towns with populations of less than one or two hundred people that are nevertheless still active communities.
A lot of small towns here have become bedroom communities. People live here and drive to the cities to work and shop. But..... they have recently started building hundreds of new houses. The cities have become so overcrowded that people are looking for affordable homes within driving distance. I hope that new citizens will mean new businesses.
Be careful what you wish for. My little town is a mess of big signs along the roadways and if you are on foot, you can't even make it across without fear. They have designed new traffic lights that help, but... They are putting in round abouts all over the states but some see those and a way to add excitement to their driving.
Too often, people who move to small towns from the larger cities bring with them a lot of demands and ideas that make it difficult for those who are local to the town to be able to survive there. Used to services that are not available in these small towns, they demand them, and this adds to the costs for everyone. While more expensive homes and a higher standard of living can be a positive thing for those who want to sell their homes and move elsewhere, too often those who have no desire to move are forced to do so.