1934 Maine Its Recreation and History
DESCRIPTION
Maine is painted here as both pastoral and reflective of the New England high-culture apparatus, an undeveloped wilderness to get back to one's roots that simultaneously has a storied history to tell.
Before a tourist would use this map to navigate Maine's roadways, they first had to be sold on visiting in the first place. Its verso, through vignettes illustrating the state's landmarks, wildlife, and history, does this preemptive branding work. Opportunities for rural sport are here given equal attention as signifiers of intellect such as Bowdoin College and the birthplaces of authors like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Scattered among this shoreline where the state's cultural capital conglomerates are a large number of golf courses marked by flagsticks. As the map moves into the rural North, illustrations of commonly hunted wildlife such as partridges and deer increase. Though much rarer, the occasional bear or bobcat is peppered across the North to remind the viewer there's still danger to be had in Maine.
Filling the blank spaces of New Brunswick and Quebec on each side of Northern Maine are vignettes showing opportunities for outdoorsmanship, historical buildings to visit, summer camps to send the kids away to for the Summer, and an invitation from governor Louis J. Brann to attend that year's Maine Visitor's day at the capitol. Notable among these vignettes is one selling the state on the promise of its waters having "no speed cops." Radiating from the spouting whale that centers the Atlantic Ocean in the lower left are depictions of deep sea fishing and scenic boat trips, 17th-century historical voyages, and teasing notes that juxtaposing actual attractions such as lobsters with fantastical ones like mermaids.
With the idea of what a trip or move to Maine might hold in store firmly implanted in the viewer, the map's aim then pivots from idealistic to instrumental on its recto. Here, a newly motorized public is equipped to navigate the state through an overlay of the different roads one would encounter—only half or so of them being hard-surfaced at the time. Peppered along these routes are an array of dot icons marking towns of various sizes and red tents marking free camp sites established to encourage tourism. Beneath the map, an "Abstract From Motor Vehicle Laws" informs viewers of basic rules of the road such as speed limits and the right of way alongside a table showing the approximate mileage between Maine's largest cities.
A Landscape Recently Made Reachable
Much of what the pictorial side treats as timeless Maine had been accessible by car for only a few years. Acadia had carried its present name since 1929, having been Lafayette National Park since 1919; the Cadillac Mountain summit road that earns its own inset panel was new enough that the Summit Tavern serving its arrivals dated to 1932. Baxter State Park, labeled here in confident red, existed because Percival Baxter had donated roughly 6,000 acres including Katahdin in 1931, to be kept forever wild. The Waldo–Hancock Bridge, drawn with its towers near Bucksport, had opened on 16 November 1931 — the first permanent bridge across the Penobscot below Bangor, replacing a ferry that had run since about 1810, and cutting thirty-seven miles and an estimated forty-five minutes off the Belfast-to-Ellsworth run for less than $850,000. The map presents these as settled features of an ancient state. They were, in 1934, roughly as old as the automobile habit the sheet was printed to encourage.
CONDITION
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