The 31-foot Paul Bunyan statue on Main Street has greeted visitors to Bangor since 1959, when the city erected it to celebrate its 125th anniversary and to stake Bangor's claim as the legendary lumberjack's birthplace. He stands with an axe in one hand and a peavey — a logging tool for rolling logs in water — in the other, a reminder that Bangor was once the lumber capital of the world.
The statue now stands in front of the Cross Insurance Center arena, surrounded by parking and concrete rather than the riverside lumber yards that made the city's fortune. It is a quintessential piece of American roadside art — enormous, earnest, and a perfect photo opportunity. Children love it. Historians of the lumber trade will appreciate the setting on Main Street, which follows the route of the original waterfront commercial strip.