Book helps make Maine travel fun

MAINE: Cruising the Coast by Car, by Arthur B. Layton Jr., Country Roads Press, 182 pages, $9.95.

Remember a television show called, “So You Think You Know Maine”? We all would have been winners if we’d had a new book by Arthur B. Layton Jr. called “Maine: Cruising the Coast by Car.” Full of fascinating tidbits and recondite facts, it’s a delightful way to learn how to get where along the coast and what you’ll find there.

Layton, a former Ellsworth American marine reporter and Bangor Daily News editor, focuses on his strong point: maritime-related places and history. He also gives good, clear directions on how to find beaches, bird sanctuaries, nature walks, parks, and places to stop for a meal. Although I wish it had been alphabetically indexed too, under the subject index you’ll find such headings as Boatyards, Cruises, Eateries, Ferry Rides, Islands and Lighthouses.

Layton breaks the coast into 14 trips starting with York County and ending with Calais.

On Page 2, you’ll learn that not only is the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard located in Kittery, but that Kittery is Maine’s oldest town, settled in 1623. On Page 7 you’ll learn that York Village, a Royal Colony in 1641, is the oldest chartered city in the United States. In describing Portland, Layton opens by writing lyrically about a bar in the Old Port area. He follows up with Portland native Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s description of piers and wharves and Spanish sailors, in his poem, “My Lost Youth.”

Layton’s description of Pemaquid Point will give you an idea of his writing style: “The point, part of a state park (small admission fee), is a visual pot of gold at the end of a scenic rainbow. The point runs out into the sea like an exposed rib of the earth. From it and the lighthouse grounds you have an unimpeded view of the Gulf of Maine. Monhegan is the large island to the southwest; due east are the Cushing and St. George peninsulas and the Georges Islands. To the west are Christmas Cove, South Bristol, and Linekin Neck.”

When he reaches Vinalhaven, he gives you a brief history of granite quarrying along the coast and directs you to two nature preserves. Armbrust Hill Wildlife Reservation, on the site of a former quarry, “has trails leading by a small pond, stands of birches, scenic overlooks, what is known as a quarry garden, and spots for picnicking. Lanes Island Preserve, accessible by causeway, has a rock-strewn shore and in interior patchwork of blueberry, rose, and bayberry bushes, spruce trees, and rolling, variegated moors.”

Now and then you get the odd fact. A place that breeds and sells Maine coon cats prompts Layton to note that coon cats are descended from Norwegian forest cats.

Between Northport and Belfast lie two colonies: Temple Heights and Bayside. Layton explains why both came into being, and when he reaches Machias, he generously gives both the American and the British versions of the Battle of Machias.

Within these pages you will find what gives each place its individuality as well as short essays on various subjects, including smuggling and piracy, Washington County, and the sardine industry.

Not a book for antiques, museum, and historic-house buffs, Layton missed the most beautiful house in Wiscasset, the Nickels-Sortwell House, owned by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities and open to the public; he missed the most spectacular house in Bath, a privately owned Greek Revival mansion on South Street; he ignored Portland’s wonderful house museums: the McLellan-Swett house, Victoria Mansion, and the Tate House in Stroudwater.

In fact, he ignored the Portland Museum of Art, failing to mention its controversial building by I.M. Pei, its extensive holdings in American and European art and sculpture, and particularly its examples of 20th century artists and sculptors; he thinks the Bowdoin museum is notable only for its Homers and Wyeths, not realizing that it has a superb, small collection of ancient black and red figure Greek vases, a fine collection of Old Master drawings, and a fine small collection of Colonial portraits and 17th century furniture. He got dates and architectural styles wrong on historic houses: The Black Mansion in Ellsworth was built in 1826 and is Federal in style, as is the Ruggles House in Columbia Falls, which was built in 1818.

But those are minor quibbles. Every time I found myself getting upset that he’d missed such historic houses as Kennebunk’s Lord Mansion or Bangor’s Isaac Farrar Mansion, he would delight me with some piece of history or obscure fact I hadn’t known. In the end, I gave up trying to make the book all things to all people. It’s wonderful for just about everything, and I am delighted with it.

Now that it’s read and digested, I’ll give it an honored place in my car beside my DeLorme Maine Atlas and Gazetteer, in readiness for my next trip. I’ll put a copy on the bedside table for visiting guests. At $9.95, it’s a book travelers and residents alike can buy, give and use.

Sandra Dinsmore is a free-lance writer who lives in Penobscot.