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Calais, Maine Travel Guide |
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Visit Calais, Maine, and you can say you've been at the easternmost point in the USA. |
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Residents of Maine and New Brunswick, while the best of friends, cling to memories of their ancestors' fervent support for, respectively, George Washington and George III. With the success of the American Revolution, United Empire Loyalists flocked across the frontier into Canada so as not to be disloyal to the monarch. But things are different in Calais ME (pronounced like "callous"), and its neighboring city, St Stephen NB. Folks in these two towns, cheek-by-jowl on the St Croix River, make a point of telling visitors how they ignored the affinities of both sides during the War of 1812, and St Stephen even supplied powder-poor Calais with gunpowder for its Fourth of July celebrations. In fact, by the time the war came, families in the twin towns were so closely intermarried that no one wanted to take the time to sort out who should be loyal to whom. These days residents celebrate this unique plague-on-both-their-houses philosophy with an International Festival in the first week of August. The two bridges over the river between the towns are thronged with merrymakers moving back and forth—through the watchful but benevolent eye of customs and immigration authorities, of course—and Canadian and American flags fly everywhere. Despite its interesting history, there's little to detain you in Calais, and soon you'll be heading onward, into Canada or back down US 1 to points south and west. When you return home, however, you'll know what the maritime forecasters mean when they predict weather for the coastline "from Eastport (on Cobscook Bay) to Block Island (RI)." |
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West Quoddy Light, not far from Calais ME.
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