For many Mainers, the legacy of Marion Fuller Brown, the grand lady of Maine Republican politics who died at her York home on June 3 at age 94, will forever be the state’s uncluttered billboard-free highways. And rightfully so.
Rep. Brown, who served in the Legislature from 1966-72, was the principal sponsor of legislation banning the huge advertising boards on Maine roads — the second of only four states to implement such a ban. An untiring advocate of a clean, green Maine, she sponsored other enduring environmental legislation as well, including the returnable bottle law, one of the first such bills in the nation.
In a folder containing a reporter’s notes about environmental legislation from that era and later, I found an interesting newspaper clipping. The wire service article reported that the United States Forest Service had planned to stain rocks along a highway through the Cascade Mountains in Washington state to make the rocks look “older” and more authentic.
Rock-colorization projects had become fairly common along national scenic highways, the report noted, because newly exposed rocks at construction sites allegedly took too long to weather naturally, presumably offending the traveling public’s sensibilities.
When the proposed project provoked public opposition — more for the kooky idea of it than for the relatively modest price tag attached — it was put on hold to determine whether the rocks would age gracefully on their own. A Forest Service spokesman said the department remained committed to “enhancing the visual quality of our National Scenic Highway system and national forests.”
Here in Maine, where our rock painting tends to run more toward the “Kilroy Was Here” genre by skulking freelance artists under the cover of darkness, the incident stirred memories of a federal program involving trees instead of rocks.
When Interstate 95 was extended decades ago from Old Town to Houlton through the one-time forest primeval, a portion of the government project involved a concept that by comparison made hauling coals to Newcastle seem like one of mankind’s great ideas.
After the highway was completed, the builders landscaped some portions of the roadside slopes with pricey nursery stock — fancy blue spruce, red maple, weeping willow and the like — presumably at some substantial cost to taxpayers.
As I drove the new stretch not long after the landscaping had been completed, it occurred to me that importing trees to plant in the middle of the north woods was akin to an Aroostook County potato farmer surrounded by vast acreages of potatoes ordering more from Idaho to fill his storage space. Later, I rang up a contact in the old Maine State Highway Commission to ask why the road builders hadn’t simply stepped into the bush and liberated local seedlings for their government-mandated highway enhancement job. It would seem there would have been easy pickings in the middle of God’s country.
That way, we’d know we had indigenous, or native, Maine trees from the neighborhood beautifying an indigenous Maine highway, and for a lot less indigenous money, I suggested. The flaw in such indigenous thinking may have been that it made sense, I learned. If Maine hadn’t accepted the trees they’d have gone to some other state, my contact explained. It was, after all, “federal money” paying for the lash-up.
Today at locales along the interstate, the imports stand out like so many exotic dancers among the proud working-class local species — the cedar and birch, the murmuring pines and the hemlock, the fir and spruce that are tied to so much of the state’s history.
Admittedly, the visual quality of our federal highway is enhanced by their presence. We should be thankful, I suppose. And thankful, too, that we didn’t qualify for the federal rock-colorization deal. There’s something down-home Maine about our locally produced piece de resistance in that area — a spray-painted memorial to Larry Bird, late of the Boston Celtics, that has adorned a ledge deep in the heart of the super highway for years now.
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Clarification: A portion of a paragraph was inadvertently dropped from the print version of last week’s column about the Legislature approving a 75 mph speed limit on Interstate 95 north of Old Town. The sentence — which ran in the online version of the column — explained that, because the legislation has costs attached, it was sent to the legislative Appropriations Committee for consideration regarding enactment prior to legislative adjournment.
BDN columnist Kent Ward lives in Limestone. His e-mail address is maineolddawg@gmail.com.