Washington County is one of the last places in the busy, over-crowded Eastern seaboard where you can get away by yourself on a forest trail or walk for miles on the salt-sprayed shoreline and see no one. You can still yield to that bit of pioneer blood left in your veins and live completely out of sight of the smoke from your neighbor's cabin, if you want to.
Not many are withdrawing that far but there are a considerable number of others who look to Washington County as their last frontier of peace and untrammeled beauty, of quietness and clear, clean air.
It's a big county as New England counties go: from the town of Danforth in the north to Steuben in the west is further than the distance from Boston to Albany, NY
With its two cities, 44 towns and 32,000 population, Washington County is larger in area than the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined.
Collectors of statistics will be pleased to accumulate the fact that the county has 1.68 million acres of land (2,628 square miles). Of this, 1.47 million acres are forested and there are 133,000 acres of lakes and ponds. Ten rivers travel a total of 412 miles from their source to the sea.
Looking at it another way, Washington County is 85 percent woodland; eight percent lakes, four percent bogs and swamps and three percent cropland and pasture.
By its very nature, then, the nation's easternmost county is a literal paradise for people, young and old, who derive inner pleasure from beachcombing, fishing, hiking, hunting, boating and swimming. Artists, photographers, antiquers, rock hounds and amateur botanists are among the many visitors who draw a great deal of their happiness from this region.
