At this time last year, Lubec was well on its way to becoming the hottest little town in America.

Millennium fever was sweeping the country, and the national media’s appetite for all things Y2K seemed insatiable. Every day, new headlines and TV reports speculated whether that dreaded computer bug really would cripple the country as the New Year dawned, causing airplanes to fall from the sky, desperate mobs to riot in the streets, and terrorists to prey on a confused and vulnerable populace.

Meanwhile, amid the hysteria, Lubec was busily preparing for its starring role in the coming millennium pageant with a mixture of folksy charm and growing media savvy. As the easternmost point of land in the continental United States, Lubec’s claim to be the first place in the country to see the sun on that momentous dawn of 2000 was quickly making the remote, struggling Down East town an unlikely celebrity. When the claim was challenged by other towns, including Bar Harbor and Siasconset, Mass., the good-natured battle for first-light bragging rights supplied the national press with an irresistible story.

Every day reporters from all over the country called Eve Preston, Lubec’s economic development director and a member of its four-person millennium celebration committee, for any information they could get on New Year’s plans in the tiny town of 1,800. The Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe and San Francisco Examiner wrote stories about the event. ABC television made plans to show up Jan. 1 to record the sunrise and festivities. No sooner had a Fox News crew finished a morning of filming local color when NBC showed up, asking to be escorted by sled to the highest peak in town.

In late November, a splashy three-page spread in the The New York Times featured tiny Lubec’s homespun plans alongside the glitzy bashes on tap for London, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Boston and Sydney, Australia.

When the big day finally arrived, every room for 30 miles around was filled and a dozen private homes had been rented out. Visitors doubled the population of the town. Then the sun came up, and the sun went down, and the visitors all went away happy to have celebrated the historic dawn in such lovely and friendly surroundings. The good people of Lubec breathed a sigh of relief, justly proud of the small-town party they’d pulled off and secretly glad that millenniums only come once every 1,000 years.

Looking back on this extraordinarily giddy moment in Lubec’s history and the relatively routine year that followed, Preston says it’s difficult to know if the event left any residual economic blessings in its wake. No, the exposure did not transform Lubec into a tourist town, with flashy BMWs and expensive SUVs clogging up the roads. Thank God, she says, because that was the very last thing the locals had in mind.

“We certainly didn’t need to be ‘discovered,’ as they say, like Cancun was discovered or Aruba,” Preston says with a laugh. “We were very happy to have the millennium celebration, and real happy that it’s gone away. It was nice to make $2,000 or so at Christmas and then say, OK, now leave us alone. The word ‘millennium’ does make some eyes roll around here these days.”

Yet having briefly been highlighted on the national map, she says, might have something to do with the fact that real-estate brokers have been getting more calls than usual about properties in town. One realtor told Preston that for the first time in 10 years she has run out of residential properties to list.

“It’s hard to say if it’s directly related to the millennium publicity, but I suspect it has something do with it,” says Preston. “The exposure made people notice us who wouldn’t have known this town even existed before.”

Perhaps the most favorable outcome from last year’s event, she says, is one that is not necessarily measured in tourist dollars and oceanfront development deals. It has nothing to do with how outsiders view the locals, in fact, but how the locals view themselves.

“It was a real boost for our morale,” Preston says. “I think the community spirit that came alive at the time has carried over. People worked so well together back then, and there’s a feeling now that we really can get things done for ourselves when the community comes together. It made people feel special in a way they might not have before. Friends and relatives from all over called and sent articles about life in Lubec that they’d clipped from the newspapers where they live. And many visitors were happy just to see small-town America, the kind of blue-collar, working life we choose to live and would never want to change. Being in the spotlight just confirmed it for us.”

This year, Lubec will celebrate New Year’s Day the way it always had in its pre-millennium days: quietly, with friends and family, in a town they won’t be sharing with hundreds of curious strangers from far away. No hype, no insistent calls from reporters or radio talk-show hosts looking for 20 seconds of Maine quaintness to slip in between traffic reports. No TV cameras, either – except, that is, for the “Today” show crew that’s expected to arrive in town next week to get some footage for the opening of its morning show.

Preston admits she’ll miss the craziness just a little. After all, what other small-town economic development director arrives at work to find her answering machine jammed with a dozen interview requests from people who simply want her to chat up her town?

“But life goes on,” she says. “The attention is here one day and then somewhere else tomorrow. We were lucky to have our 15 minutes of fame, as they say, and we’ll all remember it. Hey, who knows, maybe we’ll have a UFO sighting here next and become famous all over again.”