Moving to Maine (possibly Bangor) need advice

[maineguy8888]

Originally Posted by jeremywolf81

People in Maine call Portland a city but in nearly any other part of the US it would be called a large town. Go for a hike? You can drive five minutes from the center of Portland and you're in the woods. The state is all forest; fly over Portland some time it looks like someone dropped a small chunk of urban center in the middle of a thick forest.

I like Portland and all (have lived there on and off over the last thirty years). You CAN drive or walk to Portland parks or modest city-owned woods (we used to do it daily.) But the picture painted above isn't really accurate. The reality is that Portland has become completely conjoined with its closest suburbs over the last thirty or forty years. You can no longer tell where one ends and the next begins without observing the town line signs. So there are now at least 150,000 people in "Portland". And once the last bit of sprawl/infill is done towards the Windham, Gorham, and Saco areas (within the next decade or two), and those areas are completely conjoined with Portland, you can add another 75,000 to 100,000 people.
So yeah, I would call 150,000 to 250,000 people a decent-sized city. Especially compared to the state of Maine.

The last remaining farm in Portland is being paved over as we speak:

https://www.pressherald.com/2018/07/...tect-farmland/

[Northern Maine Land Man]

The City of Portland contains about 12% of the population of our entire state. Half our population lives within 50 miles of Congress Street in Portland and half of that is water! If the Maine Farm Program had been in effect earlier, the Maine Mall would still be a pig farm. The consequence of that is that half our legislators live within 50 miles of Portland. I testified before the legislature against a bill that would allow only one driveway on each property. The sponsor of the bill lost that fight in his town so he ran for the legislature and won. I pointed out that Great Northern had 17 miles of road frontage on Route 11 and this bill would prevent "The Northern" from building any new logging roads on that 100,000 acre parcel. the bill was defeated.

[OutdoorLover]

Ellsworth seems bustling with activity and if you like the outdoors, it's right near beautiful Acadia National Park, and not too far from the Blue Hill Peninsula and the Schoodic Peninsula for daytrips either - I don't think you could go too far wrong there.