Potatoes and canoes in Maine's big country
Children gathering potatoes on a large farm in Aroostook County in1940. In those days, schools did not open until the potatoes were harvested. The country long competed with Idaho to be considered the potato capital of America.
— Photo by Jack Delano
“This is big country, larger than Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, nearly the equal of Massachusetts; its vastness is more suggestive of the West than of New England. It winters, people will tell you, are fiercer, its forests thicker, it rivers wilder than anywhere else in the East.’’
Mel Allen, on Aroostook County, Maine, in “There’s No Easy Way to Pick Potatoes,’’ in the September 1978 issue of Yankee magazine. Mainers simply call Aroostook “The County’’. Its voters tend to favor right-wing politicians.
Allagash Falls on “The County’s” Allagash River