Maine Town’s Darkest Hours Were Before the Dawn

Exactly where the new millennium dawned in America may be a minor point to most people, but it felt like a matter of life and death Saturday in this remote fishing village on the ragged edge of the world.

As the easternmost town in the continental U.S., tiny Lubec has been boasting for months now that it would be the perfect place to spend the millennium’s first morning. Proud of their proximity to the sunrise--even the Passamaquoddy Indians who lived here centuries ago were called “People of the Dawn”--Lubecers decided this year to mix a little profit with their pride, aggressively marketing their town to creative revelers:

Be the first to greet the first dawn of the 21st century, Lubec beckoned, in New England newspapers and on the Internet.

The pitch worked. Overnight, Lubec officials were besieged by national news organizations and local motels were booked solid. Demand for rooms became so great that residents began renting out their houses, asking and getting considerable sums. For the first time in decades, Lubec was more than a crust of ice on the mittened thumb of Maine. It was the unlikely launching pad for the new millennium.

“People here follow things like this,” said Kathryn Rubeor, owner of the Bayview B&B.; “One possible explanation is there’s nothing else to do. The other possibility is these are original, intelligent, sensitive, creative and scientifically knowledgeable people.”

Sunrise Supremacy Claim Challenged

Not long ago, however, the prospect of competition dawned. Nantucket Island, Mass., had the nerve to challenge Lubec’s claim to sunrise supremacy, contending that the Earth’s tilt during winter months, combined with other astronomical intangibles, would cause the first rays of 21st century daylight to glint off Nantucket’s beaches.

Then, Lubec’s rival to the northwest, Eastport, Maine, started garnering newspaper space and tourist dollars that otherwise would have fallen to Lubec, by reminding reporters that Eastport is the easternmost city in the U.S., hence the first city to see the light of day.

Even Bar Harbor, Maine, got into the act. Residents of the downstate resort community began boasting that the height of Cadillac Mountain gave them a decided edge in the sunrise sweepstakes. Sitting atop Cadillac, they said, tourists would get their first true look at the dawn. They went so far as to persuade the U.S. Naval Observatory to agree.

Just like that, the major TV networks, which had been promising to broadcast live from Lubec on New Year’s morning, stopped calling.

Martha Stewart didn’t help matters. The mega-rich super-hostess bolstered Bar Harbor’s case by saying she planned to give a predawn soiree on Cadillac Mountain, and her remarks carried an implicit dismissal of Lubec. The sun will rise and set on my party, Stewart seemed to say, as if she had the power to issue such a decree.

Alas, poor Lubec. While the rest of the world struggled with Y2K anxiety and fears about international terrorism, the town was swept up in its own peculiar drama. The world seemed to be lining up against it, doubting and disputing the one thing Lubecers could always count on, through good times and bad.

Dawn.

Most officials treated the controversy lightly. They regarded their status as a national media darling with the wry bemusement of hardened Mainers, and pretended not to care when that status slipped through their fingers like a buttered lobster claw. Still, there was a sense that the new century, which had promised to cover Lubec in gold and untold glory, now threatened to kick off with disappointment.

Against such a backdrop, was it any wonder that the predawn hours Saturday were so tension-filled? Roughly 500 people were on hand at the candy-striped West Quoddy Head Light, gazing out across the water, gripped not just by hangovers, not just by bitter cold, but by genuine suspense.

“Sun-monitors” in Nantucket and Bar Harbor were standing by, connected to Lubec by a three-way conference call. The clock ticked past 7 a.m., the sky brightened, the monitors squinted at the east, and everyone held their breath. Finally, the sun itself would settle the question: Where would the 21st century truly begin, and whom would it leave in the Dark Ages?

Once a thriving center of the sardine trade, with two dozen packing plants to its credit, Lubec today is an impoverished community of 1,850 residents who simply refuse to quit their rocky outcrop. With the sardine populations depleted and the plants closed, residents scratch out a living by ranching salmon, raking blueberries and twining Christmas wreaths. A tough few still trap lobsters.

“They’re stubborn,” said Bonnie Atkinson, who teaches music at the local elementary school. “These are the real descendants of the Puritans.”

The climate tends to keep tourists--and developers--at bay. Which is fine. “Lubec is small,” said Ron Pesha of the Millennium Committee. “And it wants to stay small.”

Appeal of Place Becomes Clear

The nearest movie theater is 90 miles by car, the nearest traffic light 50 miles. To buy basic goods--jeans, jewelry, books, Big Macs--requires a full-day excursion. People “from away,” the phrase residents apply to all outsiders, wonder how Lubecers do it. Then they see the orange sun gliding above Campobello Island, where Roosevelts once summered, and humpback whales glittering in the blue-black water, and the appeal of the place becomes clear as the new day.

Atkinson came here two years ago from upstate New York. She wasn’t in Lubec long before she saw that the people were more isolated than she knew. “I pulled a CD out to put it in my CD player,” she says, “and the kids all said, ‘What’s that?’ ”

On New Year’s Eve, Atkinson led a small choir of schoolchildren down to Quoddy Head, where they sang a song as part of a ceremony attended by the governor. It was a rare taste of the spotlight for children who toil in darkness. “This is the poorest town in Maine,” Atkinson said. “Eighty-five to 90% of the kids get free or reduced lunches. You see kids come to school, they’re tired, dirty, they smell like fish. They’re out helping their father at 4 a.m.”

Toward midnight, many residents could be found at Frog Pond. While their children skated, they huddled around a bonfire, drinking hot chocolate, preparing for the impending sunrise, as if it were Christmas morning.

As the night wore on, icicles formed in the men’s beards. Still, no one hurried home. To leave would mean more than just breaking up the party; it would mean giving up at last on the century, facing the 21st century, a scary prospect in a place with one foot still in the 19th.

At 6 a.m., the town gathered again at the lighthouse. This time residents were joined by people from away, strangers from Phoenix and New York and California. Wrapped in blankets, enfolded in each other’s arms, the crowd stood along the cliff and stared at the pinkening rim of Canada. They squared their shoulders to the spruce forest behind them, to the town beyond, and to the rest of the nation. They turned their backs on the whole tumultuous millennium, and faced the future--literally.

The flag went up the pole. A bagpipe played. The national anthem was sung. Just as they sang the phrase, “land of the free,” the sun made its first appearance of the third millennium there. It inched over the horizon at last, and everyone stopped singing just long enough to let out a lusty cheer. Then, silence.

The time, according to Pesha, was 7:07:27 a.m. Later, he phoned a local call-in radio show to say that the three-way conference call with Bar Harbor and Nantucket Island had somehow gone dead, so he hadn’t been able to establish precisely who saw the sunrise first.

Still, he murmured, based on early reports, it didn’t look good for Lubec.

By then, however, no one cared. The strange beauty and uncommon brightness of the century’s first sun had melted the controversy.

“I’ve never seen it glow like that,” said Brighton Simmons, a Lubec fisherman, staring into the sun. “I’ve seen some beautiful sunrises here. I used to get up and throw open the screen door and say, ‘Thank you Lord for this day!’ But I’ve never seen one like this.’ ”

Wendell Denbow pressed against his wife, Theresa, and smiled.

“It’s something to be proud of,” he said. “Different cities and towns can claim to be the first to see the sun. But, here it is.”