With the advent of late spring in Maine, thoughts turn to vacation travel plans, or perhaps recollections of a special vacation taken at this time of year.

Three years ago this month, Portland’s Peter L. Hall, a Farmington native, checked off an item on his bucket list: He visited all 26 communities in the country which shared the name of his childhood home: Farmington.  He did this in a whirlwind, solo 12,000-mile automotive tour that took him to, or through, 40 states in just 30 days. 

Hall, who left Maine after his graduation from high school 1960, returned to the state about a dozen years ago, following a successful career as a tour leader in both California and internationally. And, though, by then he had traveled throughout the world,  his goal of seeing all 26 Farmingtons in the U.S. remained unfulfilled.

Until 2013.

The semi-retired resident of Portland’s Bramhall West End neighborhood, reveals publicly for the first time, his keen observations from that that trip;  these observations he made as likely the only living Maine person — if not the only living American —  to have been to every Farmington in the U.S.

A sampling of what he learned reveals a lot about how Farmington — and similar Maine communities —  compare with others throughout the nation.

The biggest: With 45,000 people, Farmington, N.M., wins this distinction. Located near the four corners monument where four states intersect at a single point, it’s one of the Farmingtons that Hall has visited more than once. “When I first went there — 30 to 40 years ago — it was a very attractive community,” he recalled. The recent exponential growth caused by the development of nearby natural gas production has occasioned changes which Hall feels have fed “A lot of non-aesthetic expansion.” To Hall, this means “They’ve allowed, seemingly with no zoning, strip malls all around the old town, so at five o’clock it becomes desolation row; businesses close,” … “People don’t even live in these downtowns anymore.”

Most affluent: The second-largest Farmington, at 25,000, is in Connecticut; it is also the most affluent. This upscale Hartford suburb of 25,000 and home to the school where Jackie Kennedy prepared for college, boasts the most highly regulated land use among the 26. With no fast food establishments and an abundance of ornate residential estates, “They still do not have an identity in terms of a downtown area,” Hall said. “There may be a service station, maybe a CVS store or something like that, but I couldn’t even find a decent coffee shop.”

Most tragic history: Farmington, W. Va., for the coal mine explosion that claimed 78 lives in 1968, a disaster that led Congress to enact the 1969 Coal Mine Safety Act. The 381 people who now live there still depend largely on coal mining jobs in nearby towns for their livelihoods, though the mine that made its name so infamous is closed. The book on what caused the disaster, however, has not been closed. A lawsuit filed in November 2014, and still pending, alleges recently-discovered evidence of a company coverup of the cause of the tragedy.

Also vying for the dubious distinction of most tragic is Farmington, Miss., a town on the Tennessee border that was destroyed in the 1862 Civil War Siege of Corinth. This left more than 650 soldiers either dead, wounded or missing and wreaked havoc on a town that had just before then been bypassed in construction of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. The 2,200 residents living there today are testament to its revived viability.

Most common characteristic: The most common assessment Hall gives to most of the other Farmingtons is a lack of identity. “There’s no essence,” he observed. This applies both to some of the suburban sprawl towns he encountered,  including Farmington, Utah, but also to those with hardly any residents at all. Among those with minuscule populations were Farmington, Del., population 112, and “very poverty stricken.” Others included Farmington, Wash., population 149, which despite its isolation Hall found very cordial. Among the others, Farmington, Ga., though meagerly populated with just 45 inhabitants still has an old railroad station that was converted into a successful art gallery. Then there’s Farmington, Mont., a one-time railroad spur line, that seemed to have no one living there at all.

Those named after each other: Hall found only three of these. Quakers from Farmington, N.Y., who migrated to Michigan were the first to do this. Those from Wisconsin appeared to be a spin-off from Minnesota’s. Further west, Oregon’s Farmington — like the state’s largest city — was named for a New England counterpart, Farmington, Conn..

Friendliest: The most hospitable to Hall were those in New Hampshire and California. In both places people he encountered were both responsive and were “really excited” about his project. The reception afforded him at California’s Farmington, a village of a mere 207 inhabitants, included a tour of its fire department, which — in typical small-world fashion — had just sold its ambulance to South Thomaston, Maine.

Most similar to Farmington, Maine: Farmington, Minn., and Farmington, Mich. Both have well-preserved downtowns. The Minnesota Farmington, has a “lot of old, nice brick buildings,” and despite being in the shadow of nearby Minneapolis has “not been swallowed up by strip malls,” and has large grain elevators. Like Hall’s Maine home town it has an agricultural fair. Its Michigan counterpart, despite a downtown identity, is not as bustling. With half-empty storefronts in a mall outside its downtown, it bears the scars of its 25-mile proximity to the economically depressed Detroit.

What they all have in common: All 26 are inland communities. This, according to Hall, only stands to reason as coastal towns were more likely populated by those in fisheries rather than in farming. All have agricultural roots.

What he likes about his favorite, Farmington, Maine: “I’m encouraged by the fact that it’s still a viable economy, it’s grown, though not too much in population, it remains the shire town; the university has grown plus it’s the distribution center for Franklin County, in terms of services such as health services, Walmart, supermarkets.” In these respects, Hall notes that the only other county seat or shire town among the Farmingtons is Missouri and that the only other one with a college or university was at the New Mexico, Farmington.

The decline of many of the other Farmingtons he attributes to their exclusive reliance on some form of manufacturing, something that has not ordinarily been a mainstay of his native community, though its lumber and saw mills, box shop and shoe manufacturing were once prominent here. Other Farmingtons he found “put their eggs in one basket and when that industry died so did the town along with it.”

To be sure, there are some community names a bit more common than Farmington. But regardless of the name, comparing so many communities that share the same name by a personal visit to all of them is a scintillating adventure few people will ever experience. We can be grateful to Peter Hall for helping to share his odyssey with others.

Paul Mills is a Farmington attorney well known for his analyses and historical understanding of public affairs in Maine. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].