1. Franklin has 1,370 Franklinians?, ummmm, Frankliners? Well, even though we don't know what to call ourselves, we know that Franklin is located downeast from Ellsworth, or, at longitude west 68.14° and latitude North 44.35° for all you outastatahs that need GPS's.

2. The Franklin High School team won the state basketball championship in 1930. Today there are no schools in Franklin. We farm all our kids out to other towns. The old high school is now the Community Center.

3. There are no traffic signals or McDonald's in Franklin. No U. S. highways or interstates traverse our town's borders. We have 17 miles of paved road, two churches, a small library, no bars, and there's only one place to buy gas and beer in town. This web site is not brought to you by the Franklin Chamber of Commerce because we don't have one.

4. Franklin is off the beaten path, on the edge of civilization. To the west is Hancock and Ellsworth, where one can buy things that are unavailable in Franklin, like Grey Poupon. To the north via treacherous road is Eastbrook, which is so sparsely populated that they use our post office. To the south, via dirt road, is quaint coastal Sullivan, which is also the location of the nearest liquor store. And in the direction of downeast, one negotiates the Blackswoods Road (a Maine Scenic Highway after it leaves Franklin) through the remnants of Township 9 (most of which became Franklin), then over Catherine's Hill (easternmost point in the U. S. where one can use a cell phone), through Township 10,  and on to Fort Cherryfield in the uncharted wilderness of Washington County.

5. The noble Tugwassah, who lived in Franklin in the early 1800's, was a distant cousin of Hiawatha. Tugwassah used the ancient Indian name for Franklin, " Umbazookskus", which means "Big Deep Water Clam Flats Lotsa Trees Rocks and Blueberry Barrens". In Franklin, we have deep water anchorage in Taunton Bay, but unfortunately, no vessels that would need same could make it past the new Non-Singing Bridge between Sullivan and Hancock. We also have Hog Bay (there is a story to the name), which provides alternating vistas of slimy mud flats and sparkling water. High tide is the only time when realtors show homes for sale along the shore. There are at least seven ponds of varying size in Franklin, plenty of woods, brooks, and dirt roads, and we even have our own Mountain! A little known fact is that the Maine State Song was written about Franklin.

6. In Franklin, we take great pride in our legacy of service to our country. The citizens of Franklin have provided our Armed Forces with many more volunteers over the years than would normally be expected from such a small town. For this fact to hit home, one has only to stand under the flag in Bayview Cemetery around Memorial Day. Positioned on the crest of a hill, with stunning views of mountains, wild blueberry land, and the sea as a background, one looks down on the monuments and plots and sees hundreds of American flags marking the graves of Franklin's brave veterans. This is truly an awesome and moving sight. Five thumbs up.

7. Although most folks around the country think of Franklin mainly as the northernmost habitat of the horseshoe crab, plenty of other wildlife abounds within the borders of our town. Hunting, fishing, and bird watching are popular pastimes. We have bald eagles, wild turkeys, sea gulls, pahtridge (ruffed grouse), pheasant, ducks, geese, hawks, many species of song birds, and, of course, a plentiful supply of our official Town Bird - crows. Fishermen can catch salmon, brook trout, rainbow trout, brown trout, bass, perch, pickerel, togue, alewife, eel, and salt water species. The worms are kept in the far left beer cooler at the Trading Post. Game animals include moose (watch out for 'em on the Blackswoods Road at night), bear, rabbit, squirrel, and deer (pronounced with two syllables in Franklin).

8. Franklin has the same seven seasons as the rest of Maine. Being on and close to the coast, our winters are generally milder than further inland. The common consensus is that the winters have been less severe in recent years. However, it still gets damn cold and we do get our share of nasty nor'eastahs - high winds, wet snow, no electricity for days, etc. It's typical to go many months without seeing bare ground, but we normally don't get the deep snow suitable for snowmobiling. Ice fishing is a popular pastime. Winter changes to mud season around April as the ground starts to thaw, turning the top six or eight inches into soup. Following mud season is blackfly season, which officially starts on Blackfly Day, the first of May. There's nothing like the warm feeling of your own blood running down your cheeks and the back of your neck while under the assault of these carnivorous cuties! Intermixed with mud season and blackfly season is spring, in which things start to flower and get suddenly frozen by surprise snowstorms. Spring turns to summer around the Fourth of July. By this time, the blackfly pressure has subsided and deer flies, horseflies, and mosquitoes have taken over. Franklin's summer is always worth the wait. We have many warm days and cool nights - great weather for boating, fishing, hiking,  gardening, and YARD SALES! September and October are usually glorious months, featuring great weather and a sharp decline in the annual infestation of tourists. The first two weeks of October can be spectacular as the fall foliage turns colors. The year winds down with the onset of hunting season (this means deer hunting) around the first of November. It's a drab, gray time of year, with the only color provided by the almost universal wearing of blaze orange clothing. Conversation centers around pursuit of the wily whitetail and most everyone looks forward to the ponds freezing so they can start ice fishing. And so it goes, year after year.

9. The Franklin Trading Post is the town's communications nerve center. It burned to the ground during a lightning storm the night of July 3rd 2002, but is now back in business - bigger and better than it was. You can go there to buy, sell, trade, talk, eat a meal, and even pour your own coffee.  

10. The word "gritty" could be used to describe Franklin with one word. That's gritty as in gravel. We have a lot of gravel in Franklin. How much, no one knows, but its presence has resulted in our fair town having the most GREAT GRAVEL TRUCKS OF MAINE! From sunrise to sunset, the hulking, lumbering monsters continually ply Franklin's roads on their  various gravel hauling missions. Folks who live here don't even notice 'em - they are simply part of our environment. Visitors, however, could easily conclude that Franklin is at the center of some kind of huge construction project, like a secret base to service alien spacecraft.

11.  Franklin, up until about 1998, used to be known as "The Christmas Tree Capital of the World".  Unfortunately, the Christmas tree industry has declined and the town embarked upon a search for a new motto. If you visit our Home Page, you can click on "Town Motto" to see some of the more recent suggestions. Finally, we settled on "The Daylight Saving Time Capital of the World".  We can actually make the claim and defend it against all comers. Here's why - Daylight Saving Time was invented by none other than the person for whom our town is named. Yep, that would be Ben Franklin. Since Ben was a United States citizen (one of the first, we might add), it only stands to reason that if there is to be a Daylight Saving Time Capital of the World, it should be somewhere in this country. Now here comes the clincher.......Since Franklin, Maine is the easternmost Franklin in the country, daylight reaches us before any of the other Franklins, be they in Massachusetts, Indiana, or wherever. Ergo, Franklin, Maine should indeed be universally recognized as "The Daylight Saving Time Capital of the World"! And, in fact, it has been by formal declaration of the State Legislature signed by the Governor.

12. Finally, we must warn you not to come ridin' into town 'spectin' that you're going to straighten out the way things are done around here.  Newcomers are often aghast when they encounter our disembodied town government. Because they find that they can actually receive some municipal services at the Community Center, they think that the town has a town office. Well, it doesn't. The Tax Collector and Excise Tax Collector ( two separate offices - same person) just happens to be there on certain days. If she feels compelled to work out of her house this week, well....... You still have to go to the Town Clerk's house for marriage, dog, hunting, and fishing licenses - and he doesn't keep regular hours. That means you might get one when you want it and you might not. Then again, you also might be able to get one on a Sunday evening or at six in the morning - and have a nice visit in the process. Please remember, that if you ever do get to thinking that there must be a better way - there isn't. Things still get done the way they did in 1813, except now we have telephones and even an answering machine (since 2004). The residents of Franklin have confirmed time and again at the ballot box that our homey and happenstance form of town government is an integral part of the character of Franklin. To suggest changing it would not be in your best interests.