That afternoon we pull our sleds into Pittston Farm. This will be our last major stop of the trip, as is the case for many sledders in the region. Indeed, out-of-state snowmobilers often plan their entire trip around this destination.
It's not easy to see why, at least at first. Like Kokadjo's, Pittston Farm includes a lodging business, but most customers come for the restaurant, which is augmented by an entirely sled-oriented general store. The main attraction is the buffet--an unusually satisfying array of stews and soups and the like, for which the restaurant charges $9.95. By noon the huge parking lot is jammed with snowmobiles, and the buffet line snakes through the store and out the door. It gets much, much busier, I'm assured.
The owner, Ken Twitchell, is down at the barn shuffling steer around. Pittston Farm is a working farm; almost everything served at the restaurant is raised or grown here. He takes a few minutes off between chores to talk to me. Standing in an amalgam of hay and manure, he looks like a big, sixtyish homeless man with a dead hedgehog strapped to his chin. But his pale blue eyes soften the look, and he speaks in a gentle voice.
I ask him how the snowmobile boom has affected his winter trade, and he looks surprised, as if he hadn't realized that it had. "Well, gosh, that's a good question," he says. "I'm really not sure." I put it to him differently: How many customers did he have on a typical winter weekend four years ago, and how many now? He reflects some more, and offers these estimates: 50 and 600, respectively. The man's business has increased by more than a factor of 10, and it seems to have made little impression on him.
Twitchell is starting to fidget now, and I sense he wants to get back to the steer. I ask him one last question: Is he going to expand his services or do anything else to take advantage of the snowmobile boom? "Gosh, no," he says. "We've just finished fixing the place up. I think we'll leave it the way it is for a while."
Back on the trail, as we approach Shirley on ITS 85, Hamilton pulls over and indicates a short, unremarkable-looking stretch of nearby woods. It's for sale, he tells me--six acres for $16,000. He was thinking of buying it and opening up a second business aimed at snowmobilers. "The state had people out here one day counting the sleds that came through," he says. "There were 500 in four hours."
Hamilton is surprised that the price for the land is so low; he'd have expected other entrepreneurs to have forced the bidding price up, considering its prime location next to the trail. The next gas station heading south is 16 miles away. But most people around here still don't get it, he says, shaking his head. "It's like seeing something glittering at the bottom of the river and saying, 'Say, isn't that gold?' And then just walking on."
David H. Freedman is a contributor to Inc. @Large: The Strange Case of the World's Biggest Internet Invasion, which he cowrote with Charles C. Mann,is now available in paperback from Touchstone Books.
| Economic impact of snowmobiling in-- |
| New Hampshire (1995-1996) |
$367 million |
| Wyoming (1995) |
$190 million |
| Vermont (1995) |
$165 million |
| Pennsylvania (1996-1997) |
$96 million |
| Quebec (1997) |
$1.5 billion |
Source: International Snowmobile Manufacturers Association
Maine snowmobile market: 1997-1998
Number of snowmobiles registered in Maine: 83,000
Number of miles ridden: 54 million
Amount spent on snowmobiles and directly related products and services, other than lodges and restaurants: $175 million
Amount spent on lodging and restaurants during snowmobile trips: $12 million
Average amount spent in Maine on lodging and restaurants per Maine-resident-owned snowmobile: $101.73
Average amount spent in Maine on lodging and restaurants per non-Maine-resident-owned snowmobile: $375.92
Total impact on Maine economy: $263 million (doesn't include, among other things, real estate or trucks for hauling snowmobiles)
Estimated growth rate of snowmobile spending per year since 1995-1996: 10%
Sources: An Economic Evaluation of Snowmobiling in Maine, 1998, the Maine Snowmobile Association; and additional calculations from the Maine Snowmobile Association.
North American snowmobile market
Number of snowmobiles registered in North America: 2.3 million
Number of snowmobiles sold annually in the United States: 162,826
Average snowmobile retail price: $5,800
Average amount spent by snowmobile purchasers on accessories: $1,100
Average household income for snow-mobile owners: $54,000
Percentage of snowmobile-owning households that own two snowmobiles: 64%
Average number of miles a snowmobiler rides in a year: 1,520
Amount spent annually on snowmobiling in the United States: $6 billion
Average number of nights per season spent in motels and resorts while snowmobiling: 7.2
Number of miles of groomed, marked trails in North America: 230,000
Average annual percentage increase in snowmobile sales from 1993 to 1997: 14%
Note: All data except as noted are for 1997. Source: The International Snowmobile Manufacturers Association, 1998.
