Maine

Maine's rugged coast and forests were long home to the Wabanaki peoples, including the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, and Micmac, whose descendants remain present in the state today. French and English colonists contested the territory from the early 1600s, and Maine was administered as part of Massachusetts for over two centuries before the Missouri Compromise allowed it to enter the Union as the 23rd state, a free state, on March 15, 1820.

Shipbuilding, fishing, and timber built Maine's early economy, and its granite coastline made it a favoured retreat for wealthy 19th-century families who built grand 'cottages' at Bar Harbor near what became Acadia National Park in 1919, the first national park east of the Mississippi. Lobstering grew from subsistence work into the state's defining industry and export.

Modern Maine pairs a quiet, self-reliant Yankee character with a booming food and craft-brewing scene centred on Portland, alongside vast interior forests around Moosehead Lake that remain some of the wildest country in the northeastern United States. Its position as the first place in the country to see the sunrise is a point of quiet regional pride.