Facing financial woes, the chamber's board of directors recently had voted to close the information center on Indian Hill.

Hamer, the chamber's executive director, had been preparing to remove the sign when word came of a donation to help the center stay open through the summer. That call was followed closely by another call from a local resident who also offered financial assistance.

Those two last-minute donations will keep the center open for at least part of the summer and possibly until the end of September when the center's lease expires, Hamer said Wednesday.

"It's a very important regional visitor's center," but the chamber is in no position to continue to fund the center on its own, Hamer said.

In addition to the $10,000 the town annually gives the chamber to market the region, officials had hoped this year that the town would kick in $13,800. That would augment the chamber's annual $23,000 contribution to the center.

The funds were not included in the municipal budget, so Hamer looked elsewhere. He said he managed to obtain a couple of private donations and an approval from Beaver Cove officials to include a request in the annual town meeting warrant, but still needed $1,500 to keep the center open for the summer.

Hamer returned to selectmen and asked for the $1,500 but was offered a $600 donation instead.

"That wasn't enough," the chamber official said, so he was directed to close the center. He was preparing to do that on Wednesday when the two calls came offering financial help.

"We thought we would get more support than we got from the town," Hamer said.

"In a good year, we see over 24,000 people, and in a good summer month we see over 6,000 people," he said. In fact, the Moosehead visitor's center sees several times more visitors than the Bangor Convention and Visitor's Bureau does.

With an assurance that the center can now remain open for the busy summer months, Hamer hopes that other funds can be found to continue the center's vital operation throughout the rest of the year. If no other funds can be found before Sept. 30, the center will close, according to Hamer. The efforts of the chamber then will focus solely on marketing.

Ever since the state was divided into regions, and the Bangor, Newport, Katahdin and Moosehead Lake regions were lumped together as The Maine Highlands, the Moosehead Lake region has had an identity crisis, according to Hamer.

That "meaningless name, a made-up name" leaves potential visitors to the state puzzled, Hamer said.

"The average tourist sitting in southern Connecticut or New York hasn't a clue what the Maine Highlands means," he said. "We know anecdotally from talking to people that when they go on the Maine Office of Tourism site, they believe the mountains and lakes region is our region, but it's not."

"Here we have the biggest lake and the tallest mountains and we're not part of the Mountains and Lakes region," which is the Rangeley area, he noted.

Hamer said an effort will be made to reintroduce the area as the Moosehead-Katahdin region.

"Between gas prices and the kind of winters and summers we've been having, our members are in serious trouble," he said.
"This content originally appeared as a copyrighted article in the Thursday, April 27, 2006 edition of the Bangor Daily NEWS and is used here with permission."