Open a copy of the Maine Atlas and Gazetteer — that invaluable guide every motorist should keep in his or her car — and start paging through it. Sooner or later, as you work your way “north,” you’ll find yourself looking at maps of places with names like alphabet soup: R4 R14 WELS, T 10 SD, T36 MD BPP. You’ll stumble over strange municipal designations rarely found south of the Piscataqua: townships and plantations and gores. These are Maine’s Unorganized Territories, but most people call them the North Woods.

For my birthday a few months ago, my wife bought me an iPhone. Like more than a few Mainers I had been slow to embrace the idea of the cellular telephone, not out of any Luddite impulses, but for the simple reason that the coverage in so much of our big state was so abysmal. I had tried making do with a cheap, pre-paid phone I kept for roadside emergencies, but it had all been for naught.

Photograph by Lori Traikos

One hundred and fifty years ago, Confederate batteries opened fire on U.S. Army forces stationed at Fort Sumter, at the entrance to Charleston Harbor. The date — April 12, 1861 — is widely recognized as the beginning of the American Civil War. This month, Down East marks the war’s sesquicentennial with a special report (page 56) by contributing editor and award-winning historian Colin Woodard, author of The Lobster Coast and The Republic of Pirates.