"The goal of Down East has always been to hold a mirror up to Maine — its storied past and lively present — and to celebrate its flinty, independent character and unhurried way of life. As Maine has changed with the times, however, so has Down East. Today the state has come to embrace its future as well as its past. Accordingly, the magazine now focuses more on contemporary Maine life and what the future might bring and less on historical background and quaint rusticity. Booming circulation and advertising gains demonstrate the wisdom of this editorial shift."
Portland Public Library's collection of Down East is complete, and begins with the first issue, August 1954. The hard copies are available in the Portland Room.
Submissions from 1996
"North by East" piece on a new regulation by the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands
"North by East" piece on an increase by the state's Office of Geographic Informa
"North by East" piece on Aroostook County's $500,000 advertising campaign, desig
"North by East" piece on a state panel that will forward its recommendations to
"North by East" piece on: a storm that tore away the last three masts on the Lut
"North by East" piece on a trade link between Portland and Husavik, a small port
"North by East" piece on: Bob Allen, who owns the Gingerbread House restaurant i
"North by East" piece on Bowdoin College professor and molecular biologist Carey
"North by East" piece on Buxton's postal system, which utilizes six different zi
"North by East" piece on campground reservations at Baxter State Park, which are
"North by East" piece on Cecil Garcelon, 68, of Linneus, who is doing a brisk bu
"North by East" piece on Cornell University's College of Ornithology, which is t
"North by East" piece on cutting your own Christmas tree, warning against cuttin
"North by East" piece on Dr. R. Blake Whitaker, a Turner-based medical researche
"North by East" piece on Elizabeth "Betty" Noyce, who died in September at the a
"North by East" piece on Ethel H. Dunn's recreation of a barn on her Kennebunk p
"North by East" piece on five moose permits that were auctioned last spring for
"North by East" piece on Fort Knox in Prospect. George McLeod started Friends o
"North by East" piece on Friends of Montpelier, the 1930s replica of General Hen
"North by East" piece on Gerald Nickerson of Caribou and Pete Griffeth of New Sw
"North by East" piece on how Maine's Bureau of Medical Services, which oversees
"North by East" piece on members of the Rockland High School class of 1963 who a
"North by East" piece on municipalities that participated in the Lincoln County
"North by East" piece on Nabisco Co.'s decision to stop making Crown Pilot brand
"North by East" piece on new state regulations related to the harvesting of elve
"North by East" piece on Paula K. Haddow, director of the ScienceWorks program a
"North by East" piece on Pemaquid Point in Bristol, where thrillseekers go to wa
"North by East" piece on students at the 43 Maine schools that have participated
"North by East" piece on Terry Lewis's Nonesuch House Antiques in Wiscasset, whi
"North by East" piece on the Acid Rain Retirement Fund, founded by University of
"North by East" piece on the Bangor-based Maine Lobster Promotion Council, which
"North by East" piece on the Colony Hotel in Kennebunkport, which took the risk
"North by East" piece on the death of Bessie Phillips, 90, on April 17. She won
"North by East" piece on the effect on the Maine arts scene of the Skowhegan Sch
"North by East" piece on the Elm Research Institute, based in Harrisville, N.H.
"North by East" piece on the history of Maine's Grange, also called the Order of
"North by East" piece on the Inn by the Sea in Cape Elizabeth, which has welcome
"North by East" piece on the large, Maine-based Hannaford grocery store chain, w
"North by East" piece on the life of Edmund S. Muskie, a native of Rumford who b
"North by East" piece on the long-awaited development of Bangor's vast and vener
"North by East" piece on the Maine Turnpike Authority's new electronic toll coll
"North by East" piece on the school on Matinicus Island, which never closes for
"North by East" piece on the Snow Squall, a clipper ship built in South Portland
"North by East" piece on the Tibbetts Bridge between Wells and Ogunquit, which h
"North by East" piece on the weekly acoustic jam sessions at the University of M
"North by East" piece on Windham High School choral director Richard Nickerson a
"North by East" piece reporting on the medicinal properties of blueberries. The
"North by East" piece reporting that an increasing number of Mainers are turning
"North by East" piece with a profile of Herbert "Bud" Wood, 75, of South Thomast
Photo essay about children and their swimming holes, such as the one photographe, Tonee Harbert