The Finch Formerly Known As Gold

12 July 2005

The very ends of the earth

Yeah, I know, spheroid, no actual "ends," yadda, yadda. On the other hand, things that sit on top of the Big Blue Marble do have defined, if occasionally ill-patrolled, boundaries, and as far east as you can get in these United States, assuming we don't annex Iraq or anything, is latitude 44° 48.9' north, longitude 66° 57.1' west.

And that's where I went today, on the basis that if you've seen one charming fishing village with local color, you've seen them all.

Lighthouse at West Quoddy HeadWhat's there is this: a smallish state park with hiking trails and a lighthouse dating to 1858, which replaced one built 50 years earlier under orders from Thomas Jefferson. The lighthouse was automated in the 1980s but is still functioning, and rather a lot of people have been photographed beside it over the years. I asked the volunteers at the Visitors Center, and they allowed that they'd had guests from 48 states. (Alaska? Idaho? Get with it already.) The careful reader will note that this is West Quoddy Head; there's an East Quoddy Head, but it's in New Brunswick, which, last I looked, was in Canada.)

Of course, getting there is half the fun, to the extent that dicing for road room with (other) tourists is fun. One novelty was seeing a prank come to life: in 2003, a radio station in Ottawa mocked the nascent Jack FM format with something called "Frank FM," and today there's an actual Frank FM along the Mid-Coast. (Mostly, I was flipping between WBACH and a little community station in Blue Hill.)

Along US 1 near Machias are two obvious competitors: Cranberry Motors, which sells a variety of GM cars, and Blueberry Ford. How they wound up next door to each other is no doubt the stuff of legend.

Maine 182 from Franklin to Cherryfield is a 12-mile thrill ride, posted 50 when it's not posted 45, and possessed of rapid successions of 30-mph curves. I tried my best to keep it at a solid 60.

And in Lubec, which is the town nearest to West Quoddy Head, I saw not one but two banners promoting University of Connecticut sports. Sounds like it's time to drive back to the Constitution State. (After all, there's no point in going any farther east.)

Posted at 6:31 PM to World Tour '05


If you wanted to extend your trip, Nova Scotia is rather nice. As is PEI. New Brunswick is what you have to go through to get to them, but it's not that far once you're out of Maine.

Posted by: Jay at 8:00 AM on 13 July 2005

On another note, there's an old trivia question that asks what are the eastern, western, northern, and southern most states. The trick to it is that the first three are Alaska, on the theory that obscure island bits of Alaska managed to get themselves onto the other side of the international dateline.

Posted by: Jay at 8:03 AM on 13 July 2005

A mere quibble: the International Date Line isn't what separates the easternmost east from the westernmost west, because it's not a geographical delineator. It also bends around to avoid separating any island part of Alaska from any other.

I think Jay is thinking of the 180th Meridian, which is a delineator which therefore can'y be re-routed for political convenience, and does therefore separate some of Alaska's islands from others, thus consigning a few of them to the Eastern Hemisphere.

Posted by: McGehee at 10:37 AM on 13 July 2005

I tend to define my directions in terms that don't require traversing more than half the circumference of the earth, unless of course I plan to do exactly that.

(Actually, the five World Tours combined are now at 21,500 miles, which is perilously close to one full circumnavigation.)

Posted by: CGHill at 5:05 PM on 13 July 2005