Maine: The Turnpike Ends at Bangor

The Maine Turnpike, which is the southern section of Interstate Ninety-Five in this state, ends near Augusta. The highway continues as Interstate Ninety-Five through Bangor, and north of Bangor it runs another hundred and twenty miles to Houlton and the Canadian border, but the character of it changes: it is no longer a commuter and tourist corridor. It is the approach to the North Woods, and the traffic thins dramatically.

Maine is the most forested state in the contiguous United States, about ninety percent tree cover, and most of those trees are in the northern half, where the population is sparse and the paper mills have been the dominant industry for over a century. The Penobscot Nation holds land along the Penobscot River centered on Indian Island, just north of where the highway crosses the river at Old Town. The Penobscot have been in this river valley for thousands of years.

The Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act of nineteen eighty settled a lawsuit by the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy tribes that claimed about two thirds of the state of Maine under an obscure federal law, they won the case in court, and the settlement gave the tribes about three hundred thousand acres and substantial compensation. Portland, about a hundred and thirty-five road miles south of Bangor, is a small city that has had a food and culture moment for the last decade, a reputation for the density and quality of its restaurants per capita that draws visitors from Boston. Stephen King lives in Bangor.

He is the most famous living Maine resident and has written about this landscape with a specificity that comes from having lived in it.