Straight outta Compton Houlton

[Erik:]

Some things don't easily forward in the mails from the States to Canada; other things (many magazine subscriptions) could be continued here, but at an added cost; some companies won't ship to Canada, period. For these reasons, we maintain a P.O. box in Houlton, Maine. Houlton is within spitting distance of the international border, right at the northern terminus of I-95, the great Eastern Seaboard conveyor. And it's really not that far from us--75ish miles / 125ish km, a nice hour and 15 minutes' drive along the upper St. John river valley. So, we generally head down that way about once a month to check the mail and putter about. Yesterday was such a day, with additional fun in mind--on the way home, we would stop by Kings Landing, a colonial history re-enactment site, where they were having "Sugar Bush Weekend," demonstrating the whole process of maple sapping and syrup-making. I have givene that it's own separate post. First, a little on Houlton.

Houlton is the county seat of Aroostook County, which is a simply immense, as counties go--it takes up much of northern Maine and is 6829 mi² (17,686 km²). [Virginia family: that's Shenandoah County * 13.3] Sheehan can tell you all about the Aroostook War in the 1830s, having studied it recently (I had forgotten it completely, if I ever knew it at all).

The town strikes me as the northern equivalent of southern mill towns--same semi-gritty feel, same downtown district struggling to hang on, although this one seems just slightly more vibrant than many of its cousins I've seen in the south. That's likely because there are no nearby larger towns with malls (Fredericton would be closest, and on the U.S. side, Bangor is two hours from Houlton).

So, rather than a large mall with a JC Penny's and a monsterplex cinema, Houlton has a small "JC Penny Catalog Merchant" storefront--


















--and the two-screen Temple Theatre (so named because it's in the old Masonic Building).






























And while the ambiance might be a bit depressed in the main(e), there are decidedly non-gritty aspects of Houlton. The pretty Meduxnekeag River (sounds almost like "me DUCK'S in a keg" ...!!) flows right through town, and there are quite a few lovely homes to be found.

We especially like this one:
















Note the outcropping on the right--that would've been the barn, originally (now obviously renovated as living space). Barns up this-a-way are often joined directly to the house, so you don't have to go outside into 57 feet of snow and -89° temps on a January evening. Kimm also says to note the covered plant in the lower left. This is a common practice with certain kinds of more delicate shrubbery.











We had a funny surprise when we learned the name of the public library in Houlton:

















For readers who might not know, our family previously lived in Cary, NC, a suburb of Raleigh (and we frequently walked to the Cary Public Library there). Turns out there's also a Cary, ME, about 10 minutes from Houlton. Odder still, it sits right on US-1...yes, the same US-1 that runs through Cary, NC. And there endeth any similarities, as this Cary du nord is a wee hamlet of 217 souls.

For a few more shots of Houlton, see this web album:

20070324_Houlton