Maine’s uncertain identity and what we have the most to boast about

9 mins read

Paul H. Mills
Paul H. Mills

By Paul Mills

It’s 1935: Just 80 years ago at this time. It’s the year of FDR’s Second New Deal, one given impetus by the populist “Every Man a King”’ movement led by 3rd Party Presidential Candidate Huey Long. Though in September, Long falls to an assassin’s bullet, his Share-Our-Wealth Society had made him the second most influential figure in America. It’s a crusade that also provided impetus that year for both enactment of Social Security and the landmark Wagner National Labor Relations Act.

In Maine, a crisis in state government leads to austerity orders by Governor Louis Brann of Lewiston. They include a decree that some state employees pay back into the state a portion of the pay checks they had already been issued. Meanwhile, the state senate struggles with an issue that still has symbolic implications for the state’s identity, whether to put “Vacationland” on motor vehicle license plates.

Supporting the proposal is Cape Elizabeth State Senator, Harold Schnurle. His opponent: Bangor attorney Roy Fernald, himself a national celebrity who had been featured in “Ripley’s Believe it or Not” for a record eight earned college and graduate school degrees.

Schnurle, an executive with a Portland concrete company, exhorted his colleagues to support the proposal as a means of “trying to get people to come down here and take vacations in our state” and also to “advertise the state’s recreational facilities and resources.”

Fernald decried the proposal on grounds it would embarrass government officials whose plates would have the term juxtaposed to the recitation of their position on the plates, thus suggesting they were lazy. Another point: it wasn’t original. California and Florida had already claimed the motto even though they had not gone so far as to decorate their plates with it.

Schnurle won the day, however, and the octogenarian “Vacationland” has been a feature of our regularly issued plates ever since. In part because Maine was one of the first states to adopt a license plate motto, it holds the record as the longest enduring such moniker in the nation.

The issue which Schnurle and Fernald addressed some eight decades ago is one which we are still debating today. Though no serious steps have been undertaken to remove “Vacationland” from the plates – even though in the last generation motorists have been given the opportunity to purchase specialty plates that promote such causes as the state university and outdoor preservation – the image not to mention the mission our state has in the world is still a crucial question.

Surprisingly, the debate between Schnurle and Fernald did not give rise to a discussion of alternatives nor has the state since then seriously considered substituting another slogan on its regularly issued plates. Indeed, Florida would emulate Maine in encouraging tourism, its plate exalting its weather with the “Sunshine” statement. Others have gone on to use the space on its plates to promote a much different mindset. They have stressed an image that encourages a purchase of a tangible product, one that might not require a visit to the state in order to fulfill the exhortation. In Georgia it’s peaches. Idaho: potatoes; Iowa: corn; Kansas: wheat; Michigan: water. Perhaps one of the more seemingly inappropriate is New Jersey’s: rarely does anyone associate one of the nation’s most urban environments with gardens!

One nomination for a possible alternative for Maine might be a variation on Alaska’s: “The Great Land.” We are, after all, the location of the largest expanse of undeveloped land of any state east of the Mississippi and for the most part it’s more affordable than anything else in the eastern time zone. By substituting “Great” for the “Vacation” we would be encouraging more than just a mere temporary expenditure in our culture.

Land could be to Maine what movies are to Hollywood or what oil is to Alaska – even though we have yet to discover such a lucrative mineral in our midst. What we have that Alaska doesn’t however, is accessibility. After all, it’s over 2,200 miles from Seattle to Anchorage but a mere 300 miles from New York City to our own Portland. Our coastline is frequently exalted as one of the more breathtaking this side of Greece, our mountains clearly rival in wonder and enchantment almost anything else this side of the Rockies.

The promotion of our more crust-bound characteristics is already perhaps implicit in our unofficial nickname, “The Pine Tree State,” arising in part from the 1895 designation of the pine cone and tassel as our state flower. But such an expression is a bit too constrictive and doesn’t do justice to the diversity of all our natural features.

Perhaps an occasion for overlooking our real estate as worth promoting in its own right has at least until recently been its somewhat stagnant ownership patterns. In the days when Schnurle and Fernald were arguing over “Vacationland” most of Maine was owned by a handful of large paper companies who had already purchased most of the state decades earlier. Among them: Great Northern, Diamond Occidental, Scott, and Georgia Pacific.

In recent years this has changed dramatically. Though industrial landowners such as J.D. Irving and Plum Creek continue to own collectively about 28 percent or 5 million acres, their role has been surpassed by such non-industrial private landowners as media mogul John Malone, who in 2011 purchased a million of our acres, and Roxanne Quimby, who just before that bought over a 100,000. Many scores of others have on a more limited scale also sprinkled cash on our soil. These have been for much smaller and individualized tracts that have put the dream of private land ownership within the reach of the average home owner. The emergence of these individually owned properties which now count for more than 35 percent of our land area is one of the most prominent phenomena in the transformation of Maine of the last 20 years. It’s also an indicator that we are deemed a worthwhile investment as much to individuals as we are to major national corporations, a phenomenon with mixed implications for us all.

Recent layoffs and closures at our paper mills are yet a harbinger that there will be both increasing opportunities (even though accompanied by possible perils) for individual ownership in the future.

As during the debate between Schnurle and Fernald during the Great Depression, we in Maine today, however, remain challenged by an economic pathology that will require more than a motto or a slogan to resolve. Their discussion, however, is but a reminder that the need to confront our identity and market it to the rest of the nation is by no means a novel dilemma.

Paul H. Mills, is a Farmington attorney well known for his analyses and historical understanding of public affairs in Maine. He can be reached by e-mail: pmills@myfairpoint.net.

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3 Comments

  1. Always interesting and, in this case, especially rich with ideas. Might have mentioned the Brookings Report suggestion that Maine’s motto be changed to “Administrationland.”

  2. Paul,
    Great article, but I have to take exception to your comment questioning New Jersey as the “garden state”. Having grown up there I can tell you there are farms and beautiful gardens throughout the state. We just choose to put them where “outsiders” can’t see them!
    Below is a listing of what New Jersey does produce provided by the website http://www.agclassroom.org
    I can tell you the peaches are fantastic as I travel there every summer to pick them!
    The market value of agricultural products sold in New Jersey in 2012 was $1.14 billion dollars.

    New Jersey grows over 100 varieties of fruits and vegetables.

    New Jersey produces five major fruit crops. They are apples, blueberries, cranberries, peaches
    and strawberries.

    The state ranked 3rd in the nation in total production of cranberries in 2012. The harvest ac

    counted for $29.9 million in agricultural sales.

    New Jersey was ranked 3rd in the production of bell peppers in 2012 with 120.3 million pounds
    harvested.

    New Jersey also ranked 3rd in the production of spinach in 2012 with a harvest of 25.9 million
    pounds.

    New Jersey ranked 5th in the nation in blueberry production growing 51.5 million pounds of
    berries in 2012

    Farmers grew 60 million pounds of peaches in 2012, 4th in the nation.

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