I was lucky to get to Northern Maine just a week before the first snowfall, while the leaves were still coloring the landscape. There was frenetic activity in the fields that week to bring in the potato crop, and large trucks mounded with potatoes passed me along Route 1. Processing plants were taking in the harvest and sending up clouds of steam. I bought a 20 lb. bag for $8 from a roadside farm store.
I was lucky to have booked a place to stay near Houlton. It was one of the largest, nicest, and best preserved old towns along the route that I visited. There are wonderful old buildings in the Market Square, where the first automobile in town appeared in 1905, and where Route 1 ran when it opened in 1926. There are several beautiful bank buildings from that era that have been repurposed or shuttered. The fraternal associations of Masons, Elks, Odd Fellows, etc. all had buildings in town that are now too large and expensive for their memberships to maintain.
Route 1 now runs a block south of the Square, before crossing the Meduxnekeag River over a modern bridge. The river is spanned by a pedestrian bridge, as well, which is probably where the original crossing into the Market Square was made for horses and carriages in the 19th Century.