Maine

Plant-based food columnist explores Maine’s buried vegetarian history

Published

2 years ago

September 22, 2024

Plant-based food columnist explores Maine’s buried vegetarian history

Avery Yale Kamila in the King Gallery at the Maine Historical Society Museum in Portland, where she has co-curated an exhibit about the state’s history of vegetarianism. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

While you may be seeing more and more vegetarian and vegan restaurants or dishes on menus around the state these days, Portland-based journalist and community organizer Avery Yale Kamila wants you to realize that plant-based diets are nothing new here. In fact, vegetarians have been in Maine for centuries, even predating the word “vegetarian.”

Kamila knows a thing or two about plant-based eating. A vegan since 1991, she writes the Vegan Kitchen column for the Maine Sunday Telegram and has been the Press Herald’s plant-based food columnist for 15 years. In 2020, she created the Maine Vegetarian History Project.

This month, the Maine Historical Society Museum debuted “Maine’s Untold Vegetarian History,” an exhibit that Kamila co-curated with John Babin, author and visitor services manager at the Maine Historical Society.

Through historic and contemporary canned and packaged foods, manuscripts, books, menus, maps and photos, the exhibit exposes the deep roots of vegetarianism in Maine. It also spotlights the groundbreaking ideas and work of vegetarian Mainers throughout history, from Father Sébastian Rale in the early 18th century, to 19th-century proponents like Seventh-day Adventist prophet Ellen G. White and Portland journalist Jeremiah Hacker, to the back-to-the-land teachings of Helen and Scott Nearing in the later 20th century.

We sat down with Kamila recently to talk about how she launched her research into Maine’s vegetarian history, why the state’s early vegetarians came to adopt the diet, what they ate and how they were treated (and often mistreated) by their contemporaries, and what the future of vegetarianism might look like in Maine.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How far back does vegetarianism go in Maine? And did the early adopters come to it for health or animal welfare reasons?

We don’t really know how far back it goes, because this is a buried history. It hasn’t been included in conventional history books or exhibitions or any kind of cultural sharing of information until now.

The earliest person that I’ve identified as a Maine vegetarian is Father Sébastian Rale (1657-1724), who was a Jesuit priest who came from France and moved to Maine. That was 300 years ago. He announced his vegetarianism in a letter to his nephew.

But were there earlier people here practicing vegetarianism? I don’t know. One of the interesting things to me is that you think about vegetarians today, you’d think they’re going to be women, right? There are men, but it tilts that way (toward women), that’s what demographics say. But all the early vegetarians I found that are documented are men – white, prominent Christian men. And that’s why their vegetarianism has been preserved: because they were a prominent person for another reason, and as a result, (their vegetarianism) got saved too, in an archive somewhere.

In terms of motivations, up until 100 years ago, it was all religious motivations. The people who were vegetarians in Maine that I found, they were all Christians. There’s always been this ascetic tradition running through Christianity. When Rale was alive, that was a time in France when there was an upwelling of interest in vegetarianism. The Jesuits have always been into asceticism. It was about living a simple life, but it was also a health motivation. Benjamin Franklin adopted vegetarianism in 1722, and he did it because he read Thomas Tryon’s famous book, “Way to Health.” So did Rale read that book? We don’t know.

In terms of animal rights as a movement, you really don’t see that until the late 20th century.

This exhibit is titled “Maine’s Untold Vegetarian History.” Why has this information been largely excluded from the conventional record?

I don’t think traditional historians have been vegetarians. The 19th- and 20th-century scholars who examined Rale and his diet and lifestyle realized he was an ascetic, but they didn’t understand the vegetarianism thing. In Rale’s time the word ‘vegetarianism’ didn’t even exist, so you had to use code words. It’s kind of like trying to ferret out LGBTQ history from conventional history, because people didn’t talk about it.

The bigger answer is that vegetarians have historically faced prejudice and probably always will. Sometimes, it’s extreme and they’re being massacred like they were in the Crusades, and other times, it’s jokes about tofu. A couple of years ago, there was a study in one of the psychology journals; they did a survey and found that most people held a stronger prejudice against vegetarians than hard drug users.

Ellen Gould Harmon White, born in Gorham in 1827 and a co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, was a strong advocate for vegetarianism. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

Maine’s early vegetarians seemed also to limit their sugar and salt intake, and abstain from caffeine and alcohol. Was that part of the vegetarian ethos at the time, or the influence of Christian temperance?

In the early 19th century, the temperance movement was already active in Maine. At that time, the word ‘vegetarian’ doesn’t exist. The word ‘temperance’ does exist. Vegetarianism was considered part of temperance. There were all these names for vegetarianism: the light diet, the vegetable diet, the temperance diet, Grahamism. The early temperance movement held every tenet that Sylvester Graham and Ellen G. White prescribed and the Adventists still believe today: Don’t eat or limit animal products, get fresh air, bathe, get exercise and good sleep, drink water. Some of these things seem obvious today, but in the early 19th century, there were no showers; you didn’t even have a bathtub or city water.

Also, the temperance movement said, ‘Don’t drink, don’t do any drugs, caffeine, tobacco or any kind of stimulant.’ And they included spices in stimulants, because (spices) were from foreign countries, and God knows what that cinnamon is going to do to you. I would say that’s a pretty good reason why (historically) we’ve had such bland food in New England.

What were Maine’s early vegetarian diets like?

If you were a vegetarian in the 1820s or 1830s, your food was super limited. You would eat whole-grain bread. If you could get some oatmeal or cornmeal, you might have a porridge. You’d eat vegetables and fruit if you could get some – in summer you have some, in winter you have none, because canning hasn’t been invented yet. People in general ate much more simply than we do now. Bread and butter, that was a meal right there. You add a glass of water, you’re done.

Water Lily Three Minute Oat Flakes made exclusively for H.S. Melcher Co., a wholesale produce company that operated on Fore Street in Portland in the 1800s. Robinson’s Patent Barley, sold by the William S. Davis grocery store in 1828, could be mixed with water or milk to create a simple porridge. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

Once we get Ellen G. White coming on the scene and she gets (Dr. John Harvey Kellogg) inventing all this stuff, all of a sudden there were vegetarian food products you could buy, and your food became interesting. You had canned food, and the canning process was perfected here in Portland. Now vegetarians could have fruits and vegetables all year round. When peanut butter becomes fashionable at the end of the 1800s and early 1900s, there are all these fascinating newspaper cooking columns in Maine about how to use peanut butter, like for making a sandwich.

How were early Maine vegetarians viewed by their omnivore contemporaries?

Once we get to Jeremiah Hacker, who was the editor and writer of the Portland Pleasure Boat from 1845 into the 1860s, he talks about prejudice against vegetarians. By the time he’s writing, the word vegetarian gets coined, I think in 1849. He starts using the word in his newspaper. He was writing all these radical vegetarian things back in the 19th century.

However, in some of the best examples I’ve seen, he attributes (the prejudice) to his religious views, or anti-religious views. He was a radical in every direction. He was a Christian, but he thought all the priests and preachers in town weren’t living their true Christian ideals.

What historical period was the heyday of vegetarianism in Maine, or is it now?

I would say it’s probably now. One of the interesting things that’s not explored in this show is, what’s the role of technology in the spread of vegetarianism? The iPhone was invented in 2007, and things really started to kick up here in Maine and nationally around that time. So is that connected? And what about social media? I don’t know if anybody has examined that, but I think those have a role to play. Because with the phones, all of a sudden you get podcasts and different ways to spread messages.

Vegetarianism goes through cycles of interest. We’re in one right now. The early 1700s was probably also one. You get another upwelling in the early 1800s that goes until about the Civil War, then you get another that comes in the late 1800s until the early 20th century. That dies out with World Wars I and II and comes back again the ’60s and ’70s. Now we’re still kind of riding that one, and when that dies down, I don’t know.

We don’t know how many vegetarians are in Portland right now, because there are no surveys that are state-based. There’s national polling on how many vegetarians are in the U.S. The surveys vary, depending how they’re done, but in general, it’s assumed that 6% of Americans are vegetarian, 3% are vegan.

You get a higher percentage if you’re in a real Democratic, liberal stronghold like Portland. Or Portland, Oregon, or San Francisco. It could be up to 12% of the population are vegetarians in a liberal hot spot like this, but nobody’s ever done a survey, so we don’t know.

You started the Maine Vegetarian History Project in 2020. Was it a pandemic project for you?

Yes, it was. But it started in March, just before the pandemic. I was moving a box of books in my office at home, and I came across this book, a reprint of the 1838 book by Dr. William Alcott called ‘Vegetable Diet.’ It’s a medical book, with medical opinions about vegetarianism.

I was looking through it, and I came to this page with a letter from a doctor in Maine. I’m like, ‘Who’s this dude? Why has nobody told me about him before?’ So all of a sudden I’m fascinated, and I Google him and find he’s got a diary over here (at the Maine Historical Society’s Brown Research Library). So I went to the library that morning and looked at the diaries, and I realized there were vegetarian references in there. Then the pandemic happens, and everything closes, so I was like, ‘That’s the end of that.’

But it wasn’t, because there’s all this archival material online. So then I just leaned into that and started looking. Just because of the power of technology, I was able to continue. And it was the pandemic, what else did I have to do? I was reading all these history books and doing archival research. That’s how it all started.

Your parents were omnivores. You became vegetarian in high school and vegan a few years later. What led you to those dietary shifts?

Looking back at my childhood, I’m a person who should’ve been a vegetarian since birth, because I was always having problems with meat being fed to me. I’ve got this horrifying memory of being fed lobster, and hating it, and being told to just suck the meat out of the legs. And I’m getting so grossed out. It looks like a bug to me.

What really tipped me was in my sophomore year at Oak Hill High School in Wales, every student had to write a speech for a competition. The teacher handed out a list of topics, and one was animal rights. I was like, ‘Well, I don’t know what that is, but I like animals.’ So in my research for the speech, I found out about vegetarianism. I gave the speech, won a prize and became a vegetarian.

Then I became a vegan in college at Syracuse. I joined a group called Syracuse University for Animal Rights. My first meeting, somebody turned to me and asked, ‘Are you a vegan?’ I think I’d read that word before, but nobody’d ever spoken that word in Maine. He said, ‘Well then you need to read this book,’ and he handed me John Robbins’ ‘Diet for a New America.’ I went back to my dorm room and read it, and I’m like, ‘OK, well, now I’m a vegan.’

Where do you see the future of vegetarianism in Maine headed from here?

What I’m seeing that’s interesting – that when I first started writing my column 15 years ago wasn’t the case – is that a lot of chefs today are much more open to plant-based dishes as a normal thing you’d have, not like, ‘I’m putting this one dish on there for the vegetarians.’ When I talk to these chefs, they say they’re not vegetarian, but they don’t like to eat steak all the time themselves. They say they like to have something lighter some nights and mix it up.

But unless there’s a major cultural shift, I don’t see everybody becoming a vegetarian. And I don’t think everybody needs to. What the science around climate change says is that people in affluent countries like the U.S. have to eat way less (meat). So I think people will be eating more of a flexitarian diet, and that’ll become more of a normal thing.

In 1845, radical newspaperman Jeremiah Hacker first published the Pleasure Boat, an alternative weekly newspaper and Maine’s earliest known vegetarian publication. Courtesy of the Collections of Maine Historical Society, Coll. 3124

Which historical figure from your exhibit would you most want to invite for dinner, and what would you serve them?

It would have to be Ellen G. White. I would have to serve something really basic. We could have some plant-based meat like seitan, maybe a casserole, definitely some vegetables, definitely some fresh fruit that I understand she always had on the table. And we could have some whole-wheat bread. Oh, my God, it would be so amazing to talk with her and find out her thoughts.

But imagine having dinner with Jeremiah Hacker and the things he might say? Because Ellen G. White would probably say things in a very moderate kind of way. But Hacker, I don’t know what he would say. He’d be an interesting dinner guest. If Hacker walked down the street today, nobody would notice. They’d be like, ‘There’s another hipster.’ He’d fit right in.

Source link

Maine

A top issue in Maine and Oklahoma governors’ races? Tribal sovereignty. – ICT

Published

11 hours ago

May 14, 2026

Press Room

A top issue in Maine and Oklahoma governors’ races? Tribal sovereignty. – ICT

This story is part one of a two-part story on gubernatorial races to watch in the 2026 midterm elections as part of the #NativeVote26.

Pauly Denetclaw
ICT

Two of the 39 states with gubernatorial races have tribal sovereignty at the top of their policy agendas: Oklahoma and Maine. The two states where tribal nations have had friction with their state governments. Now Native voters in both states will be electing a new governor, and the results will impact the relationship between tribal governments and the state for the next four years.

Wabanaki Nations in Maine had a challenging time getting state legislation signed into law by Gov. Janet Mills, Democrat, that would strengthen tribal sovereignty. The 38 tribes in Oklahoma had a tumultuous relationship with Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt.

Eighteen of the 39 governor races in 2026 will have incumbent candidates, according to the National Governors Association. Stitt is the 2025-2026 chair of the association.

What’s happening in Oklahoma?

Over the past seven years, tribal nations and the state of Oklahoma had a contentious relationship — especially after the McGirt decision. Current governor, Stitt, who is a Cherokee Nation citizen, has been outspoken against the McGirt decision, tribal compacts for tobacco and car tags, and tribal gaming compacts.

Tribal-state compacts are legal agreements between federally recognized tribes and state governments. It is most commonly used for class III gaming — slot machines and table games.

“There was a time and a day when we used to compact with the tribes. That is not a unique thing across the nation. It wasn’t a unique thing in Oklahoma,” Chip Keating said during an April 6 candidates forum. “We absolutely have to hit the full reset button with the tribes — work together, treat them with the respect that they should have been treated with, and we’ve got to get back to compacting.”

Tribal leaders are looking forward to new state leadership, said Michael Stopp, president and chief executive officer of SevenStar Holdings.

“It’s good for the tribes and the tribal leaders are happy about it,” said Stopp, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. “It has very much been a sticking point with tribal leaders that Governor Stitt has a very different perspective on sovereignty and what role the tribes play in this state. Obviously, we’ve had some big changes with the reservation status here because of the McGirt decision in 2020, but Governor Stitt, who is a member of the Cherokee Nation, has been more of an antagonist when it comes to that, than trying to help with the transition. I can definitely say the tribal leaders are looking for leadership change.”

Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin called Stitt the most anti-Indian governor in the state’s history. Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond described Stitt as having a “penchant of racism against tribes,” during an April candidates forum. He added that it was unacceptable.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt is pictured during an interview in his office Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2022, in Oklahoma City. The Oklahoma Board of Pardon and Parole has recommended clemency for death row inmate James Coddington. Stitt said that he hasn’t been formally briefed on Coddington’s case, but that with any clemency recommendation, he meets with prosecutors, defense attorneys and the victim’s family before making a decision. (AP Photo, Sue Ogrocki) Credit: Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt is pictured during an interview in his office Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2022, in Oklahoma City. The Oklahoma Board of Pardon and Parole has recommended clemency for death row inmate James Coddington. Stitt said that he hasn’t been formally briefed on Coddington’s case, but that with any clemency recommendation, he meets with prosecutors, defense attorneys and the victim’s family before making a decision. (AP Photo, Sue Ogrocki)

Tribal nations and state governments have to work together often. As seen in Oklahoma, Stitt vetoed several tribal compacts, despite overwhelming support by the state’s legislature, and this slowed the process for establishing the tobacco, car tag and gaming compacts between Oklahoma and tribal nations.

“Governor Stitt came in thinking that he could renegotiate this contract, and quite frankly, it just doesn’t work that way. Instead of listening and coming to the negotiating table, (Stitt) tried to come in with a really strong stance and ended up losing, honestly,” Stopp said. “I think that was unfortunate for him and for the tribes. Again, missing out on the chance of negotiating and I think the tribal leaders are definitely looking forward to having someone on the other side of the table to negotiate with.”

Oklahoma governor candidates

There are nine Republican candidates on the ballot for Oklahoma’s primary election set for June 16:

Gentner Drummond: 20th Attorney General for Oklahoma
Chip Keating: Former highway trooper and former Oklahoma Secretary of Public Safety
Mike Mazzei: Former Oklahoma state Senator and former Secretary of Budget
Charles McCall: Longest-serving Speaker of the House in Oklahoma history
Jake Merrick: Local radio host and former Oklahoma state Senator
Kenneth Sturgell: Local, small business owner
Leisa Mitchell Haynes: Former marketing director and former city manager
Calup Anthony Taylor
Jennifer Domenico-Tillett

Three Democratic gubernatorial candidates are also running for the primary election:

Cyndi Munson: Oklahoma House Minority leader
Connie Johnson: Former Oklahoma state Senator
Arya

Candidates will have to get more than 50 percent of the votes to avoid a runoff. If there is no outright winner, the top two candidates for each political party will head to a primary runoff election on August 25.

An additional three Independent candidates will automatically head to the general election this November.

Two important issues this election in Oklahoma are tribal sovereignty and a commitment to working with tribes.

During an April 6 Republican candidates forum, Gentner Drummond, Charles McCall, Chip Keating and Mike Mazzei, were asked to raise their hand if they shared Stitt’s perspective on the McGirt decision. Stitt was quoted as saying that the McGirt decision has torn Oklahoma apart and has created two justice systems based on race. None of the four candidates raised their hand.

“For three and a half years I’ve been working with every tribal leader in the state of Oklahoma, and I recognize them as unique among themselves, just like France is different from Germany,” Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said during a candidates forum. “We have to honor and respect the culture of diversity that they bring to the table and the needs that they have. We have been working with tribal law enforcement each of the last three years to take the fight to organize crime in our rural communities. They are a great partner.”

All four candidates promised their administration would work with tribal nations and negotiate tribal compacts.

Mazzei said at two different candidate forums that he would be a strong negotiator with tribal nations.

In a recent interview with KOCO 5 News, local small business owner Kenneth Sturgell said tribal nations are their neighbors and should be treated as such. He also said that the state and tribal nations have to work together.

Jake Merrick, local radio host and former Oklahoma state Senator, was pleased that the state Supreme Court affirmed tribal nations’ right to hunt on their own lands, during a March 30 candidates forum.

Democratic candidate Cyndi Munson, Oklahoma House Minority leader, said in a recent press release that her caucus supports tribes.

“The Oklahoma House Democratic Caucus supports tribal sovereignty and acknowledges that our tribes fill important gaps in our education and healthcare systems, as well as other areas throughout our state,” Munson said. “I am extremely grateful for the work our tribes have done and continue to do despite vicious attacks on them by the Governor.”

A respectful working relationship between tribal nations and the state has shifted significantly since the last gubernatorial race in 2022.

“I think every one of them [Oklahoma governor candidates] has said something about it,” Stopp said. “[It’s] different than four years ago. It was an issue in the governor’s race, but it wasn’t a good issue. Here everyone’s saying yes, we want to change the tone and start the conversation differently. So I think as far as Indian voters go, that conversation is going to change regardless of who wins.”

Dawnland

In Maine, Gov. Mills repeatedly refused to sign a law that would strengthen tribal jurisdiction and recognize Wabanaki Nations right to access federal Indian laws. She vetoed the bill twice despite overwhelming support from state legislators.

“We’ve had multiple opportunities to send [legislation] to the governor’s desk and not just party line votes,” said Maulian Bryant, executive director of the Wabanaki Alliance and former Penobscot ambassador. “We generally have Democratic support, but we have gotten Republicans voting on these issues too. So, the governor has seen some great bipartisan work reach her desk and has still decided to veto some of these efforts.”

In order for tribes to access federal Indian laws, the state has to approve it. The Wabanaki Alliance, created to educate the people of Maine about tribal sovereignty, has been working diligently to amend the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act of 1980.

Through the settlement, tribal nations ceded land in exchange for $81.5 million. However, it also drastically limited tribal sovereignty, and brought tribes under the jurisdiction of the state. Tribal nations that predate the state, are subjected to state jurisdiction and treated more like municipalities. The act was meant to be a living document but the state resisted changes for decades.

The Wabanaki Alliance has been able to increase tribal sovereignty and self-governance one legislation or amendment at a time. Throughout her two-terms, Mills has resisted a complete overhaul of the 1980 act and this created tension between the governor and tribal nations.

“If we had a governor that came in and fully embraced the inherent rights and inherent sovereignty of our people, and fully recognized that, it would strengthen our communities and it would also uplift the entire state of Maine,” said Bryant, who is Penobscot. “Our tribal communities are near rural places that could really use economic opportunities and could really use tribal businesses that are able to grow without all of these bureaucratic restrictions. We really are coming from a place of friendliness and we want to be good neighbors and we want to uplift the communities around us.”

The Wabanaki Alliance held a gubernatorial candidates forum in March where nine governor candidates participated:

Shenna Bellows, Democrat
Rick Bennett, Independent
John Glowa, Independent
Troy Jackson, Democrat
Derek Levasseur, Independent
Hannah Pingree, Democrat
Nirav Shah, Democrat
Angus King III, Democrat

None of the eight Republican candidates participated.

Most of the gubernatorial candidates generally supported increasing tribal sovereignty, recognizing inherent rights and working with tribal nations. Angus King III said he wasn’t educated on the topic enough to make any commitments and would have to look into it. This sentiment was shared by John Glowa and Derek Levasseur.

Hannah Pingree, Rick Bennett, Shenna Bellows and Troy Jackson firmly supported tribal sovereignty for Wabanaki Nations.

“If a governor comes in, and isn’t afraid of recognizing tribal sovereignty and sees it as an opportunity, I think we could see some real progress for everyone,” Bryant said.

Source link

Maine

The 10 Most Popular Restaurants in Portland, Maine, Back in 1996

Published

23 hours ago

May 13, 2026

Press Room

The 10 Most Popular Restaurants in Portland, Maine, Back in 1996

It seems commonplace now that people visit Portland, Maine, for the food.

Portland is home to a mix of classic and new restaurants that people travel long distances to experience.

But that wasn’t always the case. Looking back 30 years ago, Portland, Maine, was home to delicious restaurants that were not home to many frills or fanfare.

Some of those restaurants are still rolling along today, others failed to move forward.

Here’s a look at the 10 most popular restaurants in Portland, Maine back in 1996.

Back Bay Grill

Officially opening its doors in 1988, the Back Bay Grill quickly became one of the places for fine dining in Portland, Maine.

In 1996, it was one of only a handful of restaurants within the city that would be considered upscale.

The Back Bay Grill ended its lengthy run when it closed permanently in 2022.

Becky’s Diner

Opening in Portland’s waterfront in 1991, it didn’t take long before Becky’s Diner was a regular part of the working waterfront’s routine.

As the working waterfront began diminishing, Becky’s has managed to transform itself into a place locals still enjoy while simultaneously serving as a tourist destination.

35 years later and Becky’s is still going strong.

Granny’s Burritos

Opening in 1995, Granny’s Burritos has taken on an almost mythical presence for that fondly remember it.

Granny’s called several different spots around time home over the years but remains fondly remembered for its stellar nachos and signature burritos.

The last iteration of Granny’s Burritos officially closed in 2017.

Fore Street

Officially opening in 1996, Fore Street is widely considered the restaurant that took Portland, Maine, and put it on the map for food.

Almost from the day it opened, Fore Street became a cornerstone to fine dining in the city and laid the groundwork for many other upscale restaurants to follow.

Fore Street still remains one of the most popular restaurants in Portland, Maine, 30 years after it initially opened.

Squire Morgan’s

Now home to Cutie’s, the corner of Market and Milk streets was once home to one of Portland’s most popular pubs called Squire Morgan’s.

Squire Morgan’s had a fantastic run in the city through the 80’s and early-90’s before a fire burned the restaurant in 1996.

Squire Morgan’s rebuilt but it was never the same and closed permanently in 1998.

DiMillo’s Floating Restaurant

There is something unique and elegant about dining aboard a floating restaurant. That has been the draw for DiMillo’s since it opened in 1982.

Like Back Bay Grill, DiMillo’s was one of a handful of restaurants in Portland during the mid-90’s where people could visit and receive upscale service and dining.

Despite the restaurant scene changing drastically around it, DiMillo’s remains a destination restaurant for many visiting Portland.

Silly’s

Even amongst a slew of restaurants serving pub grub and classic New England fare, Silly’s always stood out.

It was a quirky spot with a eclectic menu that people consistently flocked to, especially on the weekends. It became a staple in the city throughout the 90’s.

Silly’s had a couple of starts and stops in Portland in more recent times before finally reestablishing itself in Standish.

The Sportsman’s Grill

Opened in 1952, the Sportsman’s Grill on Congress Street was a staple of dining in Portland, Maine, for decades.

The restaurant was sports themed as the name would suggest and evolved over the years to draw in sports fan and casual diners.

1996 proved to be one of the final years for the Sportsman’s Grill as it closed permanently in 1997.

The Great Lost Bear

Originally known as Grizzly Bear, the Great Lost Bear got a name change in 1981 and really grasped a rapid fanbase throughout the 80’s.

The Great Lost Bear has always been known for its large menu and larger portions and was one of the first spots in town to fully embrace craft beer and champion it.

The Great Lost Bear remains a favorite for many as it approaches its 50-year anniversary.

Walter’s

Originally opening its doors in 1990, some credit Walter’s as a stepping stone restaurant to what most see throughout Portland today.

It was a cornerstone upscale restaurant throughout the 90’s and eventually sold in 2004.

Walter’s moved from its original location at 15 Exchange Street to 2 Portland Square in 2009 and operated there for years before closing permanently in 2019.

The New York Time’s Best Restaurant Lists Feature These 7 Maine Spots

Gallery Credit: Sean McKenna

61 Maine Restaurants That Closed in 2025

Gallery Credit: Sean McKenna

Source link

Maine

Data centers are coming for rural America

Published

1 day ago

May 13, 2026

Press Room

Data centers are coming for rural America

At its peak, the Androscoggin paper mill in Jay, Maine, a rural town about 67 miles northwest of Portland, employed about 1,500 people — until a pulp digester exploded in 2020, forcing the mill to close permanently.

In 2023, the 1.4 million-square-foot facility was purchased through a joint venture by JGT2 Redevelopment and a number of other holding and capital companies. The project is led by developer Tony McDonald. Over the next three years, McDonald and his team broke down the mill’s machinery and shipped it to Pakistan, and worked to clean up the industrial site for resale. That resale agreement was finalized earlier this year, according to McDonald — turning Jay into the latest flashpoint over giant data centers in America.

Maine is particularly appealing for data center developers for its relatively cool year-round temperatures, lax land-use statutes, and 54 percent renewable energy mix, the eighth highest in the nation. There is a handful of planned data centers around the state, which recently prompted the state legislature to pass a bill ordering an 18-month moratorium on permits and building of any proposed data center that consumes more than 20 megawatts of power. Lawmakers wanted to pause construction in order to study data centers’ impact on local economies, the power grid, and the environment.

But that bill, which would have been the country’s first, was vetoed by Maine Gov. Janet Mills last month. In her veto, she cited one overriding reason: jobs. A $550 million facility proposed for the shuttered paper mill in Jay, she argued, would create 125 to 150 permanent, high-paying positions in a town that had watched its largest employer close.

From mill towns in Maine to farm counties in Indiana to desert plots outside Abilene, Texas, data center developers are telling local governments: Bring us in, give us what we need, add some tax breaks, and the jobs will follow. More than 35 states have responded by offering incentives and more to attract the industry.

There’s little research into whether massive industrial sites actually deliver the long-term economic gains they promise, but early reports suggest otherwise. Experts say that rural communities often lack the governmental expertise to properly assess how data centers might impact an area. According to recent Pew Research Center data, 67 percent of planned data centers in the US are headed to rural areas, and 39 percent are going to counties that currently have none. As data center development scales rapidly, it’s becoming clear that what rural communities around the country are actually getting isn’t jobs, but a power- and water-hungry industrial facility that temporarily employs about as many people as a midsize restaurant.

The data center fight in Maine

Originally, Tony McDonald had planned to sell the mill to an oriented strand board company called Godfrey Forest Products, which would have employed approximately 150 people, he said. When federal tariffs killed the financial backing for that project, McDonald pivoted to an idea he’d been getting pitches about.

“Most of the people that were contacting us, you know, they were all hat and no cattle,” McDonald said. He fielded multiple calls from what he terms “data center cowboys” who claimed to have one of the seven big tech companies as a client and were looking for a place to build a new data center. When he’d dig deeper on the caller, he’d find that they didn’t actually have the backing they claimed.

After a few conversations, he began pursuing a data center partnership with Sentinel Data Centers, a New York-based company that specializes in data centers serving the healthcare, financial, and hyperscale industries, according to its website. Sentinel did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.

McDonald says that, as he understands it, the project in Jay will be a neocloud data center, a specialized facility built to deliver high-performance GPU computing for AI and machine learning workloads. If a neocloud data center is going into the old mill, it will require more than 100kW of energy per rack, according to industry standards, and will need either direct-to-chip or immersion cooling, both of which require ample space and water resources.

“Most of the people that were contacting us, you know, they were all hat and no cattle.”

— Tony McDonald, JGT2 Redevelopment

While McDonald has repeatedly said that he is not interested in tax breaks for the project, he did want to leave the door open for potential tax benefits down the road if the town determines that it’s worth it. Just before Mills vetoed the moratorium, the Maine state legislature passed a law that excludes data centers from some of Maine’s tax breaks for businesses, but it leaves the door open for local municipalities to offer tax break agreements and other municipal incentives. That could spell trouble for small communities like Jay, hoping for a tax windfall to help them invest in schools, community buildings, and roadworks.

Maine state Rep. Melanie Sachs, the sponsor of the Maine moratorium bill, claims that McDonald did not inform the Jay Select Board of the new plan to turn the mill into a data center until late February 2026, just days before her moratorium bill was scheduled for a floor vote. Her bill was first introduced to committee on January 30th.

The Select Board heard McDonald’s presentation in March and voted 4-0 in support, according to The Maine Monitor. The moratorium bill passed both the state House of Representatives and Senate on April 14th, and Mills vetoed it on April 24th, citing the job creation in Jay as her reason.

Sachs, who chairs Maine’s House Energy, Utilities and Technology Committee, said her legislation was never about banning data centers. “This bill was about creating the playbook,” she said. “And we were told, ‘Don’t worry your pretty little heads about it, data centers are not coming to Maine anytime soon.’ They came anyway, and without a framework in place, towns have no mechanism to evaluate the claims developers are making.”

“Even if it’s 30 jobs, that means a lot to Jay, then, okay, but you’ve swept away protections for 1.4 million Mainers for 30 jobs,” Sachs said.

The economics of data centers

Michael Hicks, the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University, is an economist and a professor who last November published one of the first causal analyses of data center employment effects in the United States. He studied data center openings across 254 Texas counties and measured their actual effect on local long-term employment.

He found that net job creation was effectively zero. Whatever long-term jobs existed at data centers were being offset by losses elsewhere in the same sector.

”As you drive by a data center, you see people working on it,” Hicks said. “You see construction workers. The hotels locally are packed. But there’s no net pulse of that. A lot of these workers are there for three weeks to do their part of it, and then they’re gone … The real question is whether there are permanent jobs associated with data centers, and in Texas, the answer is no.”

“A lot of these workers are there for three weeks to do their part of it, and then they’re gone.”

— Michael Hicks, Ball State University

Texas serves as an ideal test bed because of its isolated grid and a mix of large, fast-growing metros and tech hubs alongside rural, remote towns, which mirrors the rest of the country. As Hicks puts it, it’s essentially a mini-United States with its variety of regions, and the economic lessons learned in Texas can be widely applied across the country.

Rural towns are often “outgunned” when trying to negotiate deals with large data center builders, said Anthony Elmo, public education funding defender at Good Jobs First, a nonprofit research center focused on corporate and government accountability in economic development.

“They don’t have the resources to negotiate,” said Elmo. “They don’t know what to ask for. They don’t have the legal expertise, and they don’t feel like they have the leverage, which I think is part of the issue.”

On the national level, the math isn’t much better, either. Business Insider recently reported that the national subsidy for data centers exceeded $2 million in costs per permanent job, and in some cases, like one in New York, companies received nearly $77 million in tax breaks for a facility that created exactly one permanent position.

Microsoft’s Quincy, Washington, facility, which is roughly comparable to the initial plan in Jay, employed as many as 500 workers during construction but now operates with just 50 full-time employees. The type of data center being built determines where on that spectrum of long-term employment a community lands. Neocloud data centers, like the one coming to Jay, can require 30 to 50 full-time staff, depending on size.

“Of those, say, 50 jobs, a chunk of them are maintenance, a chunk of them are technicians in charge of backup generators. The high-tech jobs make up maybe 10 percent of the facility,” Elmo points out. And many times, data center companies will count remote workers in other states as employees of the state in which the data center is located. “We may get a little bit of an economic effect from that, but it isn’t nearly as much as if it were a physical person in Maine buying goods and adding to the local economy,” he said.

Most of the lobbying around data centers focuses on job creation and “upskilling,” or training workers for new or better-paying jobs. But according to researchers, even the retraining argument holds little water.

Just under 30 percent of Jay’s population has a bachelor’s degree or higher, while 90 percent have a high school diploma, according to recent census data. And, as Ball State University’s Hicks says, education matters for upskilling.

In the 1800s, when farm laborers were sent into the workforce in the Midwest, they had a basic education that made them trainable for factory work. Following World War II, men and women returned from the factories and the battlefield having learned many new skills, and in the post-Civil Rights South, more Black men and women became educated and entered the workforce in ways they had been unable to before.

Neocloud data centers, like the one coming to Jay, can require 30 to 50 full-time staff, depending on size

As Hicks points out, each of these three industrial revolutions only worked because of the big, new supply of educated people ready to move into those jobs. By contrast, the US currently has negative net immigration, low birth rates, and consistently underfunded education; there is no equivalent human-capital “wave” to support a similar jobs boom in data centers and AI, he says.

“The waves of industrialization accompanied waves of human capital into the United States,” Hicks said. “So, where do we think there’s this surge of employment surrounding data centers that can mimic those three events?”

”The big tech companies are investing in upskilling the construction trades,” Elmo points out, citing OpenAI’s recent agreement with NABTU and noting that in fully developed data center markets, electricians and HVAC maintenance workers float from project to project as contractors. “For states that don’t have developed data center infrastructure, like Maine, it’s not a permanent job. It’s an 18-month job. That’s it.”

The jobs promise, Hicks argues, distracts from the one benefit a data center can reliably provide to a rural community: tax revenue.

Using the Jay data center as an example, Hicks says that a $550 million data center in a town of 4,620 people, where the median home value is around $215,000, would carry an assessed value exceeding the combined worth of every home and every business in the town. The former mill had a tax abatement but generated roughly $1.8 million in tax revenue for Jay in its last year of operation, according to the Livermore Falls Advertiser. Taxed at the same rate as any other commercial property, that revenue could fund schools, rebuild infrastructure, and attract residents for generations.

”You could make that town into a Hallmark Channel town with those sorts of tax dollars, and then jobs would follow,” Hicks said. But that all depends on whether or not the town decides to grant the future project special tax breaks.

Rural towns are often “outgunned” when trying to negotiate deals with large data center builders

It’s not clear precisely how much tax revenue the data center could generate, as of this reporting, because there are still many unknowns about the project, including who Sentinel’s clients might be, the type of data center that will be built, what kind of tax incentives the town Select Board might offer, and even how many jobs the data center might bring to Jay.

McDonald’s job estimates have been all over the map, ranging from 100 to 150 as the project has progressed. He says the numbers he gave the Select Board and the state legislature are based on what Sentinel has told him, but warned that he’s “not a data center guy.”

What data centers actually mean for jobs

Ultimately, this is a tech ouroboros. The same data center infrastructure, subsidized as a jobs program, is purpose-built to reduce human labor, and the AI it powers is explicitly designed to automate work. Communities are being asked to trade tax revenue and grid capacity for jobs in an industry whose core product is labor replacement.

“It’s the biggest capital expenditure since the Manhattan Project, and it isn’t going to create tens of thousands of jobs in the long term,” Elmo said. “It’s not some economic boom. Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, Oracle, they’re shedding jobs in real time while spending billions on data centers so that other organizations can shed additional jobs through AI. At some point, people need to ask more critical questions about this.”

As Hicks points out, rural America is being sold the same bill of goods it has been sold for 50 years. “Civic leaders are living 75 to 150 years in the past,” and framing these data center deals in the old industrial-boom mindset without the educational and demographic conditions that made previous booms possible.

The mill didn’t save rural towns, nor did the manufacturing center, the call center, or the Amazon warehouse. Based on the economic data, data centers will not save them either, and the one thing that could genuinely help — treating the facility’s tax base as a community windfall rather than a negotiating chip — is precisely what most states are legislating away.

Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.