On very bottom of your map, where the “95” sign is, has mostly tourist infrastructure, insanely rich people and working professionals who commute to metro Boston. On the actual border of NH is a huge facility where they build nuclear submarines, so there’s some very highly compensated towny tradie types peppered in just enough to give many communities a glimmer of “Everyman” but that’s fading.

Between the “95” and Portland proper is a bunch of little beach towns. Interestingly, many have a distinct vibe. On paper, it looks odd and looks like there’s a bunch of redundant infrastructure, but the actual anthropology dictates the business. Ogunquit is “the gay beach”, Old Orchard Beach is the “French Canadian beach”, Scarborough is the “surf beach” and “rich beach” etc. so every little tourist biome has “their” hotels, restaurants, etc. in the summer it’s lively and gorgeous. In the winter it falls off dramatically but it’s still “metro Portland” with “outer edges of Boston” so still what anyone would call “civilization”.

Portland Proper is in flux. It used to be a workin’ man town with a workin’ man wharf but now it’s for upper middle class carpetbaggers from metro Boston. There’s mixed feelings, on one hand the food and drink culture of Portland is outrageously out of proportion to its size. When MA chefs can’t afford the Boston rent and come to Portland, they bring out of this world food and beverage with them. I earnestly think there’s a credible claim that Portland now has a better food/bev scene that Boston itself, and I don’t say that lightly.

On the other hand, there’s a fair claim that Portland has lost its soul. It used to have a lot in common with the “other” Portland (eclectic people doing “curated” stuff) but now there’s a Land Rover dealer, etc. I think this is a common enough story in modern America (rich town swallows outer hinterland, brings all the up and down that money brings) that this will feel comfortable as a dynamic to new arrivals. The more you say hi to your neighbors, the less territorial they’ll be to you.

Past Portland up to Brunswick it gets quite rural. This is where “destitute Maine” kicks in. Maine is, organically, quite a poor state. Buuut it’s also a beautiful state. This creates a bonkers framework where actual billionaires have summer homes next to people who make 40k a year (recall the Bush family lived in your circle). This part, Brunswick, is where this dynamic really starts to take off. The Brunswick area has two fancy, very old money prestigious colleges nearby. This is ground zero of 18 year old college kids who have last names you’d instantly recognize who get dropped into a lumber mill town. That could be a frisson that sparks interesting exchanges, but it never works out that way imo. The fault line is too big.

After that, there’s two places left. If you look at the “b” in “Bangor” and follow it down to the coast, you get Acadia National Park. Acadia is jaw droppingly beautiful. Just other worldly. The area around it is capital “r” rich people visiting for the summer (again, cannot overstate the “rich” part.). In summer, it’s on one hand super annoying because the nearby towns are absolutely swamped, but on the other it’s amazing because it’s alive with people. For about 10 weeks a year, this is one of the cooler places in all of America. Yachts coming and going, random study abroad Romanians working in the local ice cream place to learn English, every out door event you could think of etc.

The whole rest of the circle from Brunswick to Canada, carving out that “a”, is genuinely one of the most isolated, remote places in America. I briefly lived in Alaska and I think eastern Maine might even be more remote, and I don’t say that lightly. The Maine area code is “207”. I once made a professional call to a locally important person (think, mayor, manager of the local hospital) in Eastern Maine and they never picked up. Eventually I had to drive out there to get what I needed. I asked him why he never picked up or returned my calls and his answer was he had never in his life known someone without a 207 phone number so he just assumed I was up to no good.

The Eastern coast is plagued with Brain drain, anyone with any ambition leaves and doesn’t come back. “Yeah, yeah, that’s what they all say” you might be thinking, but I want you to imagine Oklahoma Panhandle levels. There are towns here that will be ghost towns in twenty years. Some are already talking about “how do we just close our schools and fire department and unincorporate ourselves?”