HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
shifts in national markets and consumer tastes. Mechanization that addressed labor shortages also had the potential to dramatically deplete natural resources. While the state’s economic makeup shifted dramatically after 1910 to include a more diverse and service-based economy, Maine’s natural resource-based sectors persevered, albeit in new forms that we see today. There’s no other option in a state with 17 million acres of forestland and 3,478 miles of tidal shoreline. “These are industries that require people to be out of doors in inclement weather, to be resourceful and to be adaptable,” says Judd, author, former longtime editor of the Maine Historical Society’s quarterly journal, Maine History, and co-editor of the Historical Atlas of Maine and Maine: The Pine Tree State from Prehistory to the Present. “Getting along in farming, forestry and fishing has made for people who are enormously resourceful. I would say, that’s been the
A Century of Maine
Resourcefulness in Fishing, Farming & Forestry
great resource for the state of Maine — the mindset of the people who have grown up with nature in all of its aspects.” As small family farming, woodswork
been an era of “continuity and change
early 1900s, tourism was on the rise and
in the way Maine people used natural
environmental awareness grew stronger.
resources,” and no more so than in the
The state’s natural resource dependency
farming, forest and fishing sectors, says
took on new meaning. The intersection
Richard Judd, University of Maine profes-
of the four natural resource-based indus-
sor emeritus of history.
tries and the Mainers keeping them strong
The sectors that were built on remarkable Maine-based innovation before
have contributed not just to Maine’s economic well-being, but its identity.
the turn of the century were severely
28
Maine State Chamber of Commerce
challenged in the early 1900s by chang-
I N S O M E W AY S , the 1920s were a low
ing demographics, including outmigra-
point for agriculture in New England
tion, and economic pressures, with major
and Maine, Judd says. From its peak in
PHOTOS: COURTESY THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Written by Margaret Nagle T H E PA S T C E N T U R Y of state history has and groundfishing were in decline in the
