AUGUSTA — Maine is one of only two states to have Patriot’s Day on the books, but for Mainers to join Massachusetts in observing the holiday, they have to go there.

In Maine, state workers get the day off and banks close. It’s the first day of school vacation week.

But there is no gubernatorial proclamation, no notable parades or re-enactments.

No pageantry at all to commemorate Lexington and Concord, where Minutemen from Massachusetts — of which Maine till 1820 was a part — confronted British soldiers in the first battle of the Revolutionary War.

A check for material on the holiday by researchers at the Maine Historical Society headquarters in Portland turned up literally nothing.

“There isn’t much celebration in this state,” said Dave Martucci of the town of Washington, a Revolutionary War buff and re-enactor. “People celebrate by taking the day off.”

In 1775, when hostilities broke out, the district of Maine pitched in immediately.

“Maine did get news, there were some reports, some rumors, that the Redcoats were coming in Maine,” said Bates College historian James Leamon. “Shortly thereafter, militia troops were sent off.”

Sixty men from the town of York headed off to join the siege of Boston on April 20, one day after the first exchanges of gunfire. More followed from Biddeford, Falmouth — now Portland — and Scarborough.

The battle that would form a new nation had been joined, and Maine would have a noteworthy role in it. Within two months, Mainers won the war’s first naval engagement when rebels in Machias captured the British ship Margaretta. By the end of the conflict, according to one estimate, about 1,000 Maine men had lost their lives.

Ironically, it was the 1860s poem by Portland native Henry Wadsworth Longfellow — “The Landlord’s Tale,” better known as “Paul Revere’s Ride” — that popularized and embellished the silversmith-turned-horseman’s heroics and ensured the events of Patriot’s Day would be remembered annually.

“Hardly a man is now alive,” Longfellow mourned in setting out to reawaken national awareness, “Who remembers that famous day and year.”

But now on the third Monday in April, Maine virtually ignores the historical aspects of its commemoration. The holiday lingers merely as a lame successor to the all-but-forgotten Fast Day — a day of atonement now just a vestige of Colonial life.

Longfellow’s former home in Portland, preserved as a stop for tourists, won’t open for the season until June 1.

And it will be the end of May before visitors are welcomed at Montpelier, the Thomaston reproduction of the mansion of war hero Henry Knox, the first U.S. secretary of war.

Modern Mainers use Patriot’s Day to get a start on spring cleaning, to shop or to travel. For Martucci and other fans of history, the destination is Battle Road, from Lexington to Concord.

“That’s pretty standard for re-enactors to go to. That’s like the holy shrine,” he said.

For state Sen. Robert “Buddy” Murray of Bangor and those of similar ilk, the shrine they head for is Fenway Park, not far from the finish line of the Hub’s world famous road race.

“We all go down to Boston for the marathon,” Murray said.