LEWISTON – Like the price of gas and oil, 2008 had its highs and lows in Maine.

The year was punctuated with job losses and record fuel costs. There were convictions in high-profile criminal cases and damaging floods.

A little girl died on a road in Buckfield when the pony cart she was riding in was hit by a van, and fires destroyed a storage warehouse in Paris and a historic dairy barn at Norlands Living History Center in Livermore.

But there was good news as well, including the townspeople of Bethel and Rumford organizing projects that earned them entries in the Guinness Book of World Records, and in a ceremony spanning the cities of Auburn and Lewiston, a bridge was dedicated to peace.

And Maine joined the nation in electing the first black president of the United States.

Over the next two days, we offer the Sun Journal’s top stories of 2008:

Economy

High fuel prices, automakers threatening to close, retail stores and restaurants seeing less traffic, factories laying off workers and general fear about the recession marked 2008 as an economic roller coaster for Mainers.

In Rumford, NewPage began a market-related layoff in early December, just a week before Wausau Paper began doing the same. Two-hundred-fifty jobs in Rumford; 90 jobs in Jay.

Crude, which hit record highs early in the year, plummeted in December as consumer demand for oil fell. The result was dropping gas and home heating oil costs, a welcome shift for consumers.

Early in the year, salvage yards were paying top dollar for metals, but the bottom had dropped out of that market by December, and metal has – once again – become junk.

In Maine, college endowments took a hit as the stock market consumed profits, and car dealers desperately tried to reassure consumers there was money available to borrow.

There were layoffs at Pioneer Plastics, and L.L. Bean announced a 10 percent drop in profits.

In Oxford, George Schott purchased the shuttered Burlington Homes factory, but hasn’t yet announced what he plans to do with the site. He also decided to hold off development of his Cook Corner property in Brunswick, but his hotel under construction in Auburn is barreling toward completion.

Oxford Homes, which closed just weeks before Burlington Homes last February, is being eyed by a Pennsylvania-based modular home manufacturer for a possible re-opening in 2009, which may bring back as many as 75 jobs to Oxford.

The economic picture mid-year was bleak and predicted to remain so through at least the early part of 2009 as consumers struggle with credit card and other debt, but Maine’s foreclosure and unemployment rates are staying below the pace seen in other parts of the country.

Crime

In November, Robert LaPointe of Medway, Mass., was convicted of two counts of aggravated operating a watercraft under the influence in connection with the deaths of Terry Raye Trott and Suzanne Groetzinger on Long Lake in Harrison in 2007. Justice Robert Crowley sentenced LaPointe to 3 years in state prison, after noting the defendant had lied under oath at trial and sought to minimize his role in the deadly crash, “blaming the victims” instead. LaPointe is still facing civil lawsuits filed by the victims’ families.

On Dec. 19, Richard Dwyer of Canton was sentenced to life in prison for raping, robbing and killing Donna Paradis of Lewiston, who was seven-and-a-half months pregnant when she died in October 2007. The rare life sentence was imposed by Justice Thomas Delahanty II because of Dwyer’s premeditation of the crime and torture of Paradis, saying “I find the defendant is beyond any hope for rehabilitation.”

Scott Poirier of Sabattus was sentenced to five years in prison in March in the shooting death of his father in Lewiston in November 2006. A jury acquitted him on a murder charge, finding for manslaughter instead after believing Poirier fired his rifle, killing his father Roland Poirier during a birthday party, after becoming depressed and suicidal over memories of his father molesting him when he was 15 years old.

Duane Waterman of Sumner is facing a double murder trial in 2009 in the shooting deaths of Timothy Mayberry of West Paris and Todd Smith of Paris, committed in West Paris on July 25. According to a State Police affidavit, Waterman told police that Mayberry supplied him with OxyContin for a back problem, and that he owed Mayberry between $1,500 and $1,800 for a drug deal in which a third party refused to pay. Waterman has been held in jail without bail since his arrest several days after the murders.

Ryan Muncey of Lewiston is being held without bail awaiting trial on a murder charge in the fatal stabbing of Casey Stanley in Moulton Field on June 11. The stabbing occurred at a so-called squatter camp just off Main Street in New Auburn, prompting police and city officials to crack down on these camps in Auburn and Lewiston.

The investigation into the June death of 9-year-old Grace Legere of Auburn remains open. Legere and her younger sister, Deanna, were riding on a two-pony cart driven by Philip Trundy on Route 117 in Buckfield when they were hit from behind by a commercial van being driven by Loren Shackford of Buckfield. Deanna and Trundy were both injured; one of the ponies died at the scene. At the time, Shackford told police he had been blinded by the setting sun. Shackford was involved in another sun-blinding accident on Route 117 in 2006 within a mile of the Legere accident, in which he rear-ended a vehicle stopped at a temporary red light.

Wind and water

Record snowfall amounts in much of Maine were tough on municipal snowplow budgets, but welcomed by Maine’s ski resorts after too many years of too little snow and too few skiers. In Caribou, 189 inches of snow fell. There was considerably less in central and western Maine, but many towns reported record snowfall.

Fewer any-deer permits were issued by Inland Fisheries & Wildlife for the fall season because the heavy snowfall was tough on deer herds, with numbers at record lows.

Towns struggled meeting the demand for overtime pay for plow drivers, and sand and salt was in short supply as the winter dragged on.

Then, in spring, the rains came.

The higher-than-normal rainfall caused flooding, damaged crops and left Mainers in atypically poor moods. Golf courses canceled tournaments. Potato farmers battled blight infestations. Strawberries drowned in their fields. And campgrounds saw dwindling reservations.

And, in Minot, in one particularly heavy deluge, a sizable portion of Route 119 washed away; it was nearly three months before the road and bridge were repaired.

Meanwhile, companies interested in taking advantage of Maine’s windy weather proposed wind-energy projects across the state.

• After the Maine Land Use Regulation Commission rejected its proposal to build a wind farm in Redington Township, Endless Energy Corp. approached Carrabassett Valley in December with a request that Carrabasset “annex” that portion of Redington Township that would host the $180 million, 30-turbine farm.

• In November, First Wind of Newton, Mass., filed permit applications for a 40-turbine farm in Lincoln and another 17-turbine farm in Danforth.

• Work began on the $320 million, 44-turbine Kibby Wind Power project in August; and, in Roxbury, residents may receive free electricity if they approve an Angus King-backed wind project there.

World records

Olympia, Bethel’s giant snowwoman, will be entered in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest snowperson in the world. The 122-foot-1-inch snow woman was nearly 10 feet taller than Bethel’s previous gigantor – Angus, King of the Mountain – who rose up 113 feet 7 inches in 1999. All the snow building is the work of the Bethel Area Chamber of Commerce, and designed to draw thousands of visitors to town.

In neighboring Rumford, Scott Grassette’s efforts to coordinate the world’s largest single letter to Santa has earned a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records. The 24-foot-by-131-foot letter, written on paper donated from the NewPage mill, weighed in at 62 pounds and required 288 first-class nutcracker Christmas stamps for mailing to the North Pole, Alaska.