Experience the Best of Maine

The best of Maine delivered to your door year-round. Subscribe to Down East magazine.

Spruce trunks, reimagined as posts, returned to roughly where they stood before the couple cleared the land.

How 8 Adventurous Homeowners Live Off the Grid in Maine

The range of their approaches is striking — from island cottages with cobbled-together utility systems to a fully electric house of the future

Down East magazine Where in Maine clue April 2025

Can You Name This Lush Maine Property?

A carved wooden gate welcomes visitors to the stately grounds, which opened to the public in 1962.

Doughnuts from the Cookie Jar Pastry Shop.

Doughnuts in Maine: From Inception to Perfection

Hundreds of miles and thousands of calories later, one very hungry road-tripper digests Maine’s long, sweet love affair with the doughnut, stretching back to the humble pastry’s hazy origins.

Maine Syrup Producers Are Branching Out

Their traditions trace back generations, but faced with increasingly erratic winters, syrup makers are tapping into new ways of turning sap into everyone’s favorite pancake topping.

Nominate Your Faves in the 2025 Best of Maine Reader Poll!

Bookstores to burgers, museums to marinas, art galleries to architects — we want to know what Maine businesses and organizations YOU are rooting for.

The Magazine

April 2025 cover of Down East magazine: A bouquet of poppies and beets.

The Latest

A (Pool) Party with The Barn Yard

The New England-based building and design company's catalog now includes timber frame pool houses built for entertaining.

Kevin McCartney, collector of antique clothes irons, owner of Old Iron Inn in Caribou, Maine

Caribou’s Kevin McCartney Presses His Case For Elevating a Humble Household Tool

More than 500 antique clothes irons are on display at his B&B, the Old Iron Inn.

The Island I was among several steamboats offering service to Squirrel Island.

Squirrel Island’s First Hundred Years

On the centennial of Maine’s original summer colony, Down East asked Edith Wheeler, the 93-year-old granddaughter of the Squirrel Island Association’s first president, to pen a recollection of the little colony’s early days.