For most of 2026, the tallest figure in Prospect Harbor has been a banner. It hangs at Big Jim's empty spot beside the old Stinson cannery and asks "Where's Big Jim?" A QR code leads to his story, and a selfie station with cutouts stands in for the nearly 40-foot fisherman who has watched over Main Street for more than 50 years.
His return to Prospect Harbor was scheduled for October, after the Penobscot Marine Museum's Sardineland exhibit closed, and the Big Jim coming back won't look like the figure the village last saw. In 2011 the sign was repainted as a lobsterman holding a lobster trap. The Big Jim returning to 200 Main St. has been taken back to the way he looked in Kittery in 1959, and he's holding a sardine can again. The last sardine can in the United States was packed at that plant in 2010, so the sign will once again advertise that ended fishery while the plant behind it handles lobster.
The face coming back is older than the one that left
Big Jim has changed his look every time the plant behind him changed hands. The Gouldsboro Historical Society's Big Jim page lays out each version in order:
- 1959, Kittery. The Maine Sardine Council commissioned him and the Donnelly Advertising Co. built him. He stood beside US Route 1 near the state line, painted on plywood and holding a can of sardines.
- Early 1970s, Prospect Harbor. Stinson Canning Co. rebuilt its factory after a fire on May 9, 1968, then rescued the sign and moved it to the new plant. Locally he became "The Stinson Man," holding a Beach Cliff sardine can.
- 1984. An aluminum replica made of 12 panels replaced the weathered plywood. A Whitten & Son crane lifted it into place, and Vaughn Heffren of Fairfield painted it.
- 2001. Gouldsboro sign artist Scott Moshier gave him a very different look.
- 2011. Live Lobster Co. of Boston bought the factory, and the sardine can became a lobster trap covered in lobsters.
That last version is the one most people driving through Prospect Harbor over the past 15 years would know. It faded and peeled through the 2010s, as a string of owners tried lobster processing and the plant closed by 2020. In the fight over the proposed American Aquafarms salmon operation, local artist Blair Weaver made a 6-foot Big Jim carrying a protest sign, and the application eventually failed with state regulators.
Why he had to leave to be restored
The restoration started with a museum exhibit. In October 2024, Penobscot Marine Museum photo archivist Kevin Johnson asked the Historical Society whether the museum could borrow Big Jim for two years for Sardineland, an exhibit on Maine's sardine industry. The museum would take him down, have him professionally restored to his 1959 Kittery look, pay for the work, and put him back up in Gouldsboro in October 2026.
The deal took another year to finalize, partly because the factory sold again in 2025. The Historical Society credits the new owner, Bold Coast Seafood, with backing the plan. Because of the delay, Big Jim spent one season in Searsport rather than two.
The work itself went quickly:
- March 29, 2026. Dan Miller of Belmont Boatworks and his son Henry, joined by local volunteers, took the sign down over about 10 hours and hauled it to their Belmont boatyard.
- Spring 2026. The aluminum panels were air-blasted to bare metal, then primed and repainted indoors. The WOW Collective, four women from the Belfast area, brought back his original colors and his sardine can.
- June 10 and 13, 2026. He went up beside Route 1 at the museum's Searsport campus, and the museum welcomed him officially three days later.
- October 3, 2026. The museum's free SardineFest ran from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and doubled as his send-off party. Sardineland stayed open through October 10.
The Historical Society gives Johnson credit for the whole effort and makes the regional comparison directly: "Bangor has Paul Bunyan, We have Big Jim."
Putting him up is the slow part
Taking Big Jim down took one day. Putting him back up in Prospect Harbor takes much longer. Jennifer Stucker, who leads the restoration effort and calls herself Big Jim's "wicked stepmother," told the Mount Desert Islander that he would come back in October in pieces and look "unsightly at first." Her team has to reassemble the cutout, weld some parts back together, and repaint every bolt after it's in place.
"Each of his bolts needs to be repainted while he is up there. It's a time-consuming task. When we first took Big Jim apart, we had a bucket of bolts."
Stucker gave that update at the Schoodic Scenic Byway Event in Winter Harbor on September 22, and the Ellsworth American carried the same account. Bold Coast Seafood offered its own welders for the job. "Taking him down is easy; it's putting him back up that's the hard part," she said.
The crew planned the work in stages, with the panels reassembled first and the welding and bolt painting done afterward with the sign standing. The restoration crew has invited visitors to the vacant spot to take a selfie and tag it #WheresBigJim.
The plant behind him is busy again
This is the first time in years that Big Jim will stand in front of a working seafood plant. The years before it were hard ones. The Historical Society notes that the plant had closed by 2020, after the Navy bases at Winter Harbor and Corea had both shut down, leaving fewer full-time residents and jobs on the peninsula.
Mainebiz reported that Bold Coast Seafood's partners bought the former Stinson cannery at auction in September 2025. As of March 2026, the company had 20 employees and expected to grow. An interest-free $1.25 million loan plus the company's matching funds would pay for crab-processing equipment, research, and more salaries. The three partners are Curt Brown, Betsy Lowe, and Pete Daley. Lowe and Daley run the plant floor, and Brown handles customers and marketing.
Gouldsboro's 2026 town report describes the plant as "humming with activity" processing lobster and "gearing up" to process Jonah crab. The report calls that a potential "landmark change in Downeast Maine's seafood industry."
So the sign will show the 1959 sardine salesman while the business behind him works on lobster and crab. Over his six decades, Big Jim's paint has usually followed the plant's business. This time it shows the plant's past.
A holiday welcome, and a second landmark down the road
Stucker told the Mount Desert Islander that a "Welcome Big Jim!" party is being planned with Bold Coast Seafood for the holiday season, with a parade, food, and activities. "Who knows, maybe he will have a big Santa hat on him for the parade," she said. Updates are posted on the Historical Society's Big Jim page.
Gouldsboro Town Park on Main Street has its own holiday landmark. Selectman Robert Harmon built the town's first lobster-trap tree there, decorated with buoys and lights. The town report says the tree lighting, with cookies and hot drinks for families, is meant to be an annual event. The first lighting was Sunday, December 7, 2025, at 5 p.m., with cocoa and cookies, according to the December 2025 town newsletter. The January issue thanked everyone who came. The town also plans more work at the park: shade trees, a flat area for event tents that can be booked through the Town Office, and a corner of marine artifacts and replicas for children.
Big Jim's upkeep has its own savings account. In 2025 the Historical Society and Schoodic Arts for All held the Big Jim-Boree. Local artists reworked 16 plywood "Little Big Jims," changing what each one held, wore, or even what species it was. The pieces debuted in the Winter Harbor Lobster Festival parade and were then auctioned off. All proceeds went into a fund the Historical Society manages, and it still takes donations through the Big Jim page.
Landmarks like Big Jim help make Prospect Harbor feel like home. At Catharine Icenogle Baldwin, we follow these stories because the Schoodic Peninsula's character is part of what we help clients understand. If you're curious what your Gouldsboro property is worth as Big Jim makes his way home, request a free home valuation and we'll be glad to talk it through.
